'Well, let me put it to you this way,' he told her, rounding on her, his eyes dark, glittering with the intensity of his anger. 'If I stay here and I can't get through to you any other way, I might... I just might be tempted to take you right back to my bed and show you...' He broke off, making a harsh sound of disgust deep in his throat. 'Oh, for G.o.d's sake, what's the use? I've got work to do. If you hear from the hospital, I'll be in my study. I take it we are still going to see your parents this afternoon?'

That was the arrangement they had made, and Heather nodded her head, confused by both his att.i.tude and his comments. What was it he had been going to say? That he could take her to bed and overcome her scruples? That he could make her want him with the same mind-destroying intensity she had experienced this morning? She already knew that. Why else was she so terrified of letting him get too close to her? Why else was she so determined to put up barriers against him? How long had her body secretly wanted him as its lover? How long had she needed him like that? How long would she need him? It was a frighteningly appalling prospect to want a man with such a physical intensity, and with a need that seemed to turn her off all other members of the male s.e.x, when she knew there was no love, no respect, no softer, gentler emotions of any sort between them.

David was her armour against him, she recognised. David was her only means of keeping him at bay, because once he knew that there had been no other man, that he only had to touch her and she melted with longing for his possession... once he knew that... She shivered; she would never allow Kyle to become her lover. She would never open herself to the emotional pain that such a relationship would bring. Never!

CHAPTER EIGHT.

As she stared around her father's hospital room, Heather was acutely conscious of a feeling of constraint and nervousness. She couldn't even look at Kyle, and yet at the same time she was desperately afraid that her parents, especially her mother, would guess that something was wrong and start to question her.

Amazingly, her mother appeared not to notice how jumpy and tense she was, and she put it down to the fact that she was still quite naturally concentrating all her attention on her father.

Kyle knew, though. The cool, mocking glances he gave her whenever she dared to look at him informed her of that. How adept he was at concealing and controlling his emotions! Looking at him now, witnessing that taunting curl of his mouth, who could ever imagine that not so very long ago that mouth...

Abruptly she turned her head away, her face flushing as she was swept by an unwelcome surge of physical desire.

'You look hot, Heather, are you all right?'

Of course, it would be now that her mother suddenly became maternal and concerned, and Heather could see in the sardonic smile Kyle gave her that he knew quite well what had caused that brilliant wave of heat to surge over her skin.

Today her father looked even better; he was partic.i.p.ating far more in the conversation, and some of the machines had been taken away. He was now out of intensive care and talking enthusiastically to them about how much he was looking forward to going to Portugal.

Her parents knew the part of the country where Kyle's villa was situated very well. It was right down by the Spanish border, quiet and still, virtually untouched by tourism.

Listening to the three of them talking, Heather was conscious once more of being shut out, but for once she didn't mind. It gave her an opportunity to strengthen her defences. But against what? An attack on her virtue? She shuddered a little, remembering how easily Kyle had been able to arouse her. Too easily.

'Heather, come back! You were miles away.'

With a small start, she looked at her mother.

'Probably thinking about her date tonight,' Kyle drawled.

'A date? Who with?' her mother asked curiously.

'A...'.

'Our local Lothario,' Kyle interrupted before she could explain. 'I made the mistake of warning Heather against him. I should have remembered that any advice from me was likely to have the opposite effect to that intended.'

'Oh, Heather, do you think you're being wise?' her mother reproached her anxiously. 'If Kyle is right about this young man...'

'I'm meeting him for a drink, Mum, that's all.' Over her mother's head, Heather glowered at her persecutor. Kyle was enjoying this, d.a.m.n him! Just for a moment she longed to rip the mask of illusion from her mother's eyes and tell her exactly how Kyle himself had treated her, but the temptation faded just as quickly as it had come, leaving her feeling weak and shaky. Why was it that Kyle had this ability to push her far, far beyond the limits of sanity and into a dangerous mood of reckless intensity?

'David seemed a perfectly respectable young man to me,' she challenged, glaring at Kyle. 'His mother is rather overpowering, mind you.'

'His mother? You've met her?'

'Yes, she came round the other morning. They're farmers, and Kyle's closest neighbours.'

'And Mama Hartley is as protective of her one and only as a ewe with one lamb,' Kyle interrupted derisively. 'His wife, when he's allowed to marry, will be hand-picked by Mama, but in the mean time she turns a blind eye while he amuses himself with anyone stupid or innocent enough not to see through him.'

A sharp cough from her father brought Heather back to reality. She bit her lip, resenting Kyle for pushing her into such an argumentative frame of mind. Her father should be her main concern at the moment, and not her relationship with Kyle.

They left half an hour later. The next time she saw her parents would be when she and Kyle collected them to drive them to the airport. She and Kyle had seen her father's specialist before leaving the hospital, and he had a.s.sured them that her fatherwas perfectly able to undergo the flight.

'A few weeks relaxing in a pleasant climate will do far more to help him recuperate than being cooped up in a hospital room. You've taken the sensible precaution of hiring a nurse to travel with him, and she'll see him safely installed in your villa. We've made arrangements with the local hospital, and a local doctor will call and check on him every day.'

Until that moment, Heather hadn't known that Kyle had hired a nurse to accompany her parents on the flight.

She looked up at him now, as he drove the Jaguar back towards his home.

Her words of thanks sounded stilted even to her own ears, her throat felt sore and rough, taut with resentment because yet again he had done something selfless and thoughtful, and in doing so had destroyed the image of him she was trying so hard to build up. She wanted to view him in the worst possible light. She needed to because that was the only way...

Her thoughts skidded to a standstill as she refused to contemplate where they were leading.

'Heather, cancel your date with Hartley tonight.'

The abrupt request, coming so close on the heels of a realisation she wasn't yet ready to accept, made her tense and reject his suggestion without even considering it.

'I don't interfere in your personal life, Kyle,' she snapped acidly. 'I'm not seventeen any more, you know. I'm perfectly capable of dealing with any unwanted advances.'

'Are you?'

She opened her mouth, a vigorous confirmation already on her lips and then closed it again. If she answered him as she wished to, mightn't he then a.s.sume that she had actually wanted him to make love to her?

The frustration of her dilemma showed in her eyes, and Kyle, who was watching her, suppressed the bitter words clamouring for utterance. He had forgotten how stubborn she could be, how stubborn and how proud. It was useless to wish that time could roll back and that one could re-live the past in order to wipe out its mistakes.

Heather hated and resented him. He should be able to accept that by now. Instead he... Impatient with both himself and the irony of his feelings, he compressed his mouth, and Heather, catching sight of that hardening of his facial bones, told herself fiercely that she was glad that she hadn't betrayed herself to him; glad that they were still enemies.

It was only later, when she was getting ready for her date with David, that she questioned what it was she feared she might betray, but she brushed to one side the encroaching little voice that asked the question, dismissing it as too intrusive and demanding.

David arrived just as she went downstairs. She had dressed casually for their date, in a softly gathered russet-coloured wool skirt with a toning sweater worn over a cream silk blouse.

'Very country,' Kyle drawled when he saw her. 'Who is it you're hoping to impress, David or his mother?'

His derision stung, and she hurried past him, not trusting herself to make any response. No doubt he preferred women dressed in designer silks and lace, in clothes that emphasised the perfection of bodies honed by hours of pampering. She wasn't that sort of woman, and she never would be.

The pleased glance of approval that David gave her soothed her lacerated senses. His solicitous care as he helped her into his Land Rover made her think that Kyle must have been exaggerating in describing his att.i.tude towards the female s.e.x.

The pub was several miles away, isolated and exposed to the worst of the winter weather, but nevertheless it seemed well patronized, to judge from the full car park.

Several people greeted David as they walked in, most of the greetings coming from a group by the bar.

As David introduced her, Heather was conscious of several overt smirks from one or two of the other men present. Instinctively, she disliked this male gathering and its almost schoolboy humour, although she tried to temper her rejection of it by reminding herself that her upbringing and life had been such that she wasn't used to this particular aspect of the male psyche. Her father and mother rarely went out socially without one another, and not having had any siblings, and being rather a quiet and withdrawn sort of child, she had never been drawn into the sort of environment where she might have witnessed this type of male 'ganging up'.

Kyle, like her, had always been something of a loner. He had made friends, it was true, but looking back she could see that he had always held them at something of a distance.

Now, while David was welcomed into the heart of the almost exclusively male group, Heather found that she was left on its fringes, forced to make awkward and unwanted conversation with the two other girls present.

One of them was a small blonde mouse of a child, who seemed to have no opinions of her own and who apparently needed to corroborate everything she had to say by appealing to her boyfriend for confirmation.

The other, a tall, striking brunette, appeared to be as bored by the exclusively male conversation as she was herself, and Heather quickly discovered that she was not here with a boyfriend, but her brother.

'I was staying in tonight and at something of a loose end. When Guy suggested I join him I agreed, forgetting what bores ex-public schoolboys can be at times.' She made a face. 'I live and work in London and I'm just home for a few days' holiday. This isn't my scene, really. I suspect it isn't yours, either?'

'Not really,' Heather agreed, turning to answer an almost inevitable, 'Have you known David long?' from the mousey blonde at her other side.

'No, I haven't. He rescued me the other night when my car broke down.'

'You don't live locally, then?' she persisted.

'Not normally, at the moment I'm staying with a... a friend. Kyle Bennett.'

The blonde's shocked expression might have been amusing in other circ.u.mstances, and Heather could almost have sworn she moved two paces away from her, as though distancing herself from someone carrying some sort of dread disease.

Written large in her expressive and ingenuous blue eyes were the words 'fast and dangerous'.

How amusing that she of all people, should be so judged! How amusing, and how untrue.

The brunette was obviously made of sterner stuff. Her eyebrows lifted a little, but her only comment was a rather envious one. 'Kyle Bennett. I've heard of him of course, but never actually met him. Are you... old friends?'

'You could say so.' Some touch of mischief stopped Heather from explaining too much. 'I've known him since I was... oh, in my early teens.'

'Really?'

Susie, the little blonde, moved a little closer. 'Your parents were friends with his or something, then, were they?'

Quite what made her do it Heather didn't know, perhaps it was the self-confident, irritating air of the men standing behind them, perhaps it was something she had read in Susie's curious eyes, she didn't know. She only knew that she was as appalled as Susie looked when, instead of explaining, she said carelessly instead, 'Oh, no, I've never met Kyle's family. We... lived together for quite some time, but he left and we'd rather lost touch until quite recently.'

Strictly speaking, it was the truth, but Heather was well aware of the connotation that would be put on her revelations. She was right as well.

Behind her the hum of male voices stilled, and as she turned her head she caught David looking at her with an odd, calculating expression in his eyes.

Claire, the brunette, broke the silence by saying casually, 'I'd like to meet him. I believe he's a most interesting man.'

'Very interesting,' Heather agreed, mentally thanking her for the lifeline. 'In fact, one of the reasons I'm here now is that I'm shortly to start work for him.'

She could see that none of them believed her. Behind her, one of the men made a soft comment to his companions, and the appreciative male laughter it caused made the back of her neck burn scarlet with temper and mortification.

The evening couldn't end too quickly for her after that, and when, at half-past ten David suggested that they leave, she was all too happy to comply.

She caught one of the suggestive leers his friends gave him, but ignored it, following him out into the crisp, icy coldness of the winter night.

It had been warm inside the pub, and she shivered as she waited for him to unlock the Land Rover door.

They seemed to have been travelling for an awfully long time, she realised half an hour later. Surely it hadn't taken them this long to reach the pub?

Just as she was about to comment, she saw a crop of buildings ahead of them and expelled her breath in relief. Until then she hadn't known that she was actually feeling tense, but now she recognised that Kyle's warning had taken root and had grown rapidly as she'd listened to the men's conversation.

Her relief was short-lived, however, as she realised that the outline of the buildings was unfamiliar to her.

'David?'

'Don't worry, it's a farmhouse we own, no one actually lives here, so we won't be disturbed.'

For a moment his casual manner almost deceived her, and then, as she turned towards him, she read the cold-blooded intention in his eyes and shrank back from him.

'David, I think you've made a mistake,' she said as evenly as she could. 'Please take me home.'

'Oh, come on.' How quickly he had changed from the charming young man into this leering threatening stranger. 'It's too late to pretend now. And it isn't as though it's going to be the first time. Lived with Bennett, did you? Well, he should have taught you a trick or two well worth knowing.'

She reached blindly for the door, but he beat her to it, taking her wrist in a painful grip.

'David, stop this! I don't...'

'Want me?' he laughed sourly. 'You will, I promise you. Bennett can't be that good in bed.'

What she was hearing horrified her, and if she had had any doubts about David's intentions, these were swiftly banished when he cursed her obscenely under his breath and told her explicitly and graphically just what he expected of her.

It was like a nightmare, and she struggled to hold on to some measure of calm. David couldn't force her to go into the farmhouse with him. She was safer staying here in the Land Rover. She was long past believing that he was far too civilised to want a woman he had to force into making love with him. She had read in his eyes his determination, and suspected that it sprang as much as anything from a boast made to his cronies that he could do so.

It was a type of male att.i.tude that had always sickened her, and now it frightened her as well. She had read about women being raped by men whom they knew, but she had never, ever expected it to happen her. But it would, if she didn't do something...

If only she could get David to leave her alone in the Land Rover... She could drive off then and leave him. But how?

There was only one way. Gritting her teeth, she forced a smile. She was going to play a role she had never, ever even envisaged playing, and the whole of the rest of her life would depend upon how successfully she played it.

'Kyle is good,' she agreed, trying to sound both coy and promising, closing her mind to the sickening sense of despair eating into her as revulsion for what she was doing hit her.

'That's more like it.' A self-satisfied smile curved the weak mouth. Oh, why hadn't she listened to Kyle. Why had she allowed her headstrong self-will, to overrule his cautioning?

'Come on, let's go inside.'

She looked wildly into the dark stretch of ground that lay between them and the house, and then inspiration struck.

'You go first. It's dark. It... it scares me.' She gave a realistic shudder.

'I'll turn on the headlights.'

'Then you'll have to come back and switch them off. I'm scared of strange places. It's so remote and... and wild up here. You scare me, too,' she added softly, sickened by the look of pleasure and gloating darkening his eyes, hating herself for what she was being forced to stoop to.

'All right... but first I want a taste of what you've been giving Bennett.'

He grabbed her before she could stop him, and Heather had to force herself not to push him away. If she fought him now she would lose everything she had been working towards. Even so, her throat tightened and locked against a rising wave of sickness as his mouth fastened over hers. His hands were inside her jacket, rough and unskilled as they touched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.