It was obviously not a place ever lived in by a woman. Claudia smiled painfully to herself as she assessed her own reaction to that very female awareness. She didn't need to think about the presence of another woman in the life of her husband. her ex-husband, she reminded herself sharply. Hadn't it, after all, been her furious bitterness, her love-torn jealousy, at the thought of his intimacy with another woman, his betrayal of her and their love that had brought about the ending of their marriage in the first place?

She could smell food cooking in the kitchen and her heart suddenly jolted against her ribs as she recognised what he was cooking.

An omelette. The very first dish he had ever made her had been an omelette, which he had fed her as they sat together, and afterwards. afterwards. An omelette's comfort food, she had murmured protestingly when he had produced it in response to her request for a romantic meal.

But Garth had been holding her foot in his hands at the time, gently stroking the flesh with his fingers while he slowly nibbled on her toes. She had very quickly lost interest in debating what did and did not constitute a romantic meal.

As she watched Garth walking towards her carefully carrying the tray with her supper on it, Claudia tried to remind herself that she was forty-five years old; that they had been apart for years and that he had betrayed her, but it was no use. She could hear the ominous crack in her voice, feel the tears threatening as she told him shakily, "You've made me an omelette." And then the food was forgotten. The only place she wanted to be, the only comfort she wanted, was the hard warmth of Garth's arms around her as she sobbed against his shoulder.

"Garth, I'm so afraid, so very, very afraid."

"Hush, hush... come on. Come and sit down. Let's talk."

"It's different for you," Claudia told him almost half an hour later when she had finally felt she had herself under something approaching reasonable control.

"After all, you are her father."

"Yes, and I'm sure she's going to be really impressed when she learns how I became her father."

"I... the young these days have a different view of... fidelity. She might not--' " That wasn't what I meant," Garth interrupted her grimly, explaining when Claudia frowned uncomprehendtngly, " I don't know how I came to father Tara, Claudia. As I tried to tell you before, I can't remember anything about it, or about. about her mother. All I can remember is half waking out of a drunken stupor and realising that. "

"That what?" Claudia pressed him.

"That there was someone... someone who didn't feel right. It's a memory so elusive that I can't even call it a memory. How on earth she managed to get..." He broke off, realising the infelicity of the remark he had been about to make.

But Claudia was older now and more worldly wise.

"You mean how you managed to have sex with her. But you took her to bed."

"No," Garth denied.

"I did no such thing. I went to bed, yes, and I woke up in bed to find an unknown young woman, who I later discovered was one of your clients, going through my clothes--a young woman who scarpered with the contents of my wallet too fast for me to be able to find out how she got in or why she was in our bedroom. It is possible for a woman to initiate sex with a man and--' " Without his knowing anything about it? " Claudia interrupted him sharply.

"Garth...?"

"I was drunk," Garth reminded her.

"That she obviously managed to get an automatic physical reaction from my body, I've never been able to deny--even though I personally can't remember a thing about it. But the result, Tara's conception, had nothing to do with me and it wasn't any more of my doing in any true sense than if I'd been a sperm donor. No, less, because a sperm donor is making a conscious decision to donate the seeds of life, whereas--' "Do you think she did it deliberately, that she actually wanted...?"

Claudia swallowed, feeling sick.

Now that she thought back, and she had deliberately blocked these thoughts since the divorce, she could remember Garth telling her about finding someone in the flat and her keys had also gone missing around that time. Could Katriona have deliberately planned. "Who knows? I doubt that even she knew," Garth told her softly.

"What I do know, though, is that you are the only woman I have ever loved or ever wanted, either emotionally or physically, the only woman I still want."

Claudia swallowed--hard--and even then her voice, the only voice she could find, was still a very croaky and emotional whisper as she asked him, "Garth, what are you saying? You and Katriona were lovers, you said."

"No," Garth contradicted her firmly, shaking his head.

"Katriona and I were never lovers. We had sex, yes, we must have hadfor Tara to have been conceived, even if I have no memory of it. Butit was only the once, and for all that I knew of it, for all that Iconsciously contributed to it, I might as well have been completelycomatose."

"But you told me," Claudia whispered painfully, 'you said that you'd been lovers. "

"No, Claudia/ Garth denied gently.

"You said we were lovers. I tried to tell you how it really was but--you didn't seem to want to take it in."

"You didn't try very hard to persuade me to listen," Claudia defended herself huskily.

"Maybe not," Garth agreed.

"Call it male pride if you like, but I was already feeling shut out, anunnecessary and unwanted distraction who was coming between you andTara. It seemed to me that you were ready to seize on any excuse toend our marriage. I felt you didn't want to hear the truth."

Claudia felt her eyes glaze with tears. She knew she couldn't whollydeny what Garth was saying even if now. Even if now what? Even if nowshe saw things differently, felt things differently? Even if now,right now, sitting here with him like this she felt.

"I should have listened properly to you," she admitted quietly.

"Perhaps if it had been anyone other than Katriona..."

"You'd been through a traumatic time," Garth defended her.

"How traumatic perhaps neither of us truly appreciated then. You'dlost our child, your own child, and any chance of ever having another,and then Katriona... I've never said this to you before, Clo, butthere've been so many times when I've watched you with Tara as she'sbeen growing up and marvelled at the generosity of spirit that'senabled you to love her so totally and instinctively. In yourshoes..." He shook his head.

"You'd have done what? Punished her for be n ing Katriona's child...for the fact that you could not have children?No, you wouldn't. Garth," she insisted."Not you.""And not you, either," Garth reminded her.Claudia bit her lip."She was so easy to love," she told him thoughtfully."Right from the very first time I saw her... held her.

Who knows? " She looked away from him.

"Perhaps subconsciously even then, a part of me somehow knew...

recognised that she was your child.

She's so like you in so many different ways. "

"That's funny," Garth whispered softly.

"I think she's very like you."

They both laughed and then Claudia's expression changed.

"What is she going to say when I tell her. Garth? How is she going to

react... to feel?" She closed her eyes against the tears she could

feel starting."I don't know if I can bear it. She's going to be so shocked. It willbe like I'm taking away the whole of her past, everything she believesabout herself. I've counselled adults who were adopted children..."

She swallowed hard, burying her head in her hands as she cried out indespair, "Why didn't I tell her years ago when she was young enough tosimply accept that she wasn't mine? It wasn't just because I wasafraid that she could be taken away from us... from me. I wasn't justafraid of losing her physically, but losing her emotionally as well. Iwas afraid that she would resent me for not being her real mother, fornot being Katriona, for living when Katriona had died!"

"You are her real mother," Garth told her fiercely, filling the glass of wine Claudia had been drinking as she ate her omelette, then pouring a fresh one for himself.

"Tara's an adult now, Clo. Of course she's going to be shocked anddistressed, we both know that. And maybe even for a while she'll turnaway from us--that, too, would be quite natural. But she's your child, remember, the child you've loved and taught. It's from you she gets her sturdiness of character, her strength and her ability to judge people and situations calmly and with compassion. It's from you that she's learned how to love generously and healthily."

"I've made so many mistakes. Garth," Claudia admitted, taking a deep gulp of her wine and refusing to be comforted.

"Look at the way I misjudged you. If I was counselling a woman in the same situation as you were in, would I blame her because some man had had sex with her without her permission? Would I reject her and turn away from her?"

"It's easy to be dispassionate when the person you're dealing with isn't someone close," Garth reminded her.

"Yes," Claudia admitted ruefully.

"I loved you so much that I couldn't stand the thought of you with someone else, anyone else, but especially Katriona."

"Did you, Clo?" Garth asked.

"Perhaps if I'd felt more confident about that, about your love..."

"But you must have known how I felt," Claudia protested.

"Once, yes. I thought I did. But after Tara came along, I often felt I was superfluous to requirements," Garth explained wryly.

"I always seemed to be in the way, our sex life dwindled to next to nothing and--' "

I.

I felt guilty and. and ashamed of the fact that I couldn't give you your own children," Claudia whispered tremulously.

"I thought when you touched me... when we made love, that part of you must be thinking how purposeless it all was. Sometimes... after you'd come inside me, I used to cry, thinking of the waste, all that effort, all that energy, all those potential babies...."

"Is that what you thought, that making love was purposeless?" Garth asked her steadily.

"Sometimes," Claudia admitted, 'but . but not always. "

Garth looked at her for a moment, then told her, "When I took you to bed, Clo, when we made love, making babies was almost always the very last thing on my mind. What I wanted, what I loved, was you ...

holding you, hearing you, seeing you, feeling you respond to me, wanting me in the same way. And I'll tell you something else. Right now there's nothing I want more than to recapture those feelings. Right now the way I feel about you, the way I want you, has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with any desire to procreate a new generation. It's your fault," he murmured as she looked up at him, unable to conceal the expression in her eyes.

"It was all those memories you brought back when you talked about my coming inside you."

"Garth," Claudia protested, but it proved to be a very weak and ineffectual protest as she was the first to admit when he ignored it and instead simply removed the wineglass from her nervous fingers before cupping her face.

She didn't even try to move away when he looked searchingly into her eyes, keeping his own open as he gradually lowered his head, his mouth moving towards her own.

As his lips brushed rhythmically against hers, Claudia could feel her eyes starting to fill with tears of emotion. How could she have deliberately denied herself such tenderness? She could feel her mouth, her body, starting to soften and turn to liquid, to fill her with heavy, languorous heat.

"Garth." Instinctively, she pressed herself closer to him.

As he heard her moan his name, felt her body react to his nearness, recognised all the little telltale signs that showed her responsiveness to him. Garth dropped his hands from her face and gathered her close, the touch of his mouth on hers becoming harder and more demanding, his teeth tugging on her bottom lip, his tongue savouring the melting sweetness of her mouth.

Claudia could feel herself starting to tremble violently as she clung to him. His kiss had been like a torch being applied to dry under and she was the one going up in flames. Had she been this ardent, this passionate, when they were younger? If so, she couldn't remember it, couldn't even begin to compare all these feelings that thundered down on her like the overpowering force of a sudden avalanche with the surely far tamer and less heated desire she had experienced in her youth.

Was it the years spent apart, the years of sexual drought that were causing this conflagration? And if so, why? Her celibacy had been selfimposed and deliberate; there had been men who, if she had shown the merest flicker of inter est, would have been more than willing to love her. Luke, for instance, but what she had thought might develop between them was nothing com pared to what she still felt for Garth.

Sex had never really been a priority for her and yet here she was literally trembling from head to foot with need, aching with the raw, hot, urgent pulse of it, wanting Garth so much that she could quite easily, oh, so easily, have torn off his clothes.

Claudia gave a small gasp beneath the pres sure of Garth's mouth and opened her eyes, shocked to discover what she was actually doing that she had already removed Garth's tie and ripped open the top buttons of his shirt.

"Don't stop," Garth begged her throatily.

Claudia licked her suddenly dry lips.

"Do it, Clo," she heard Garth demanding hoarsely, his eyes burning hot with responsive ardour as he followed the movement of her tongue.

"Do it," he repeated when she didn't move, taking hold of her hand, kissing her open palm and then slowly starting to convey it to his body before stopping and keeping his gaze fixed on hers, slowly, ever so slowly sucking on her fingers.

Garth's eyes were hot, so hot that Claudia felt she could burst into flame from their fierce heat. Burn up, melt, dissolve in the honey liquid flood of pleasure that was surging through her.

Her hands trembled so much as she unfastened the rest of his shirt that she felt she would never complete her task, but once it was done she gave a sharp, shuddering sigh when she saw his body. The hair on his head might just be starting to become flatteringly tinged with grey at the sides, but the soft curls of silky fine hair on his torso remained just as dark as they had always been, his nipples small and flat but staying sharply erect. Just like her own.

Claudia swallowed.

"Don't stop there," Garth urged her.

Claudia looked down at his belt and then up at his face, her eyes betraying the fact that it wasn't just his belt she had noticed in that swift female glance.

"I never was much good at keeping my reaction to you a secret, was I?.