She still would have been overjoyed if she had been offered it for the right reasons, she reminded herself.

The phone rang, breaking her concentration. She reached for the receiver, freezing as she heard Jake's voice.

"I'm at home," he told her.

"We need to talk. Could you call round here?"

"Now?" Rosie questioned angrily. Her heart was beating far too fast and she suddenly felt slightly dizzy and sick. The last person she wanted to see was Jake, but as she tried to concentrate on thinking up an excuse that would not betray her vulnerability she heard him saying quietly, "Yes... If you could... It is rather important..."

What was rather important? Rosie wanted to demand, but he had already replaced the receiver, quite obviously taking her agreement for granted.

As she stepped into the reception area, she wondered if she was being oversensitive in thinking that Jane, who worked for her, was looking at her rather speculatively.

"I ... I have to go out for a while," she told her, conscious of the fact that her face was burning hotly and that she felt as guilty as a small child telling a fib.

The first thing she saw when she pulled up outside Jake's house was Chrissie's car. She stared at it, her heart sinking, and then reluctantly opened her own car door.

Jake must have been watching for her, be cause he had opened the front door and was coming towards her almost as soon as she had locked her car.

He was wearing a suit, dark grey, with an immaculate white cotton s.h.i.+rt and a discreet silk tie. He didn't look like the man who had held her and touched her, who had stroked her and kissed her... who had made her body ache and burn. This was the old Jake--the formidable, austere, disapproving Jake who had haunted her.

She stood still, panic and dread flaring inside her, her expression unknowingly betraying what she was feeling so that Jake cursed under his breath.

He had promised himself that he would take things slowly, that he would use this opportunity fate had so unexpectedly given him to put their relations.h.i.+p on a fresh footing. He had told himself that now that he knew the reasons why she had always held him at a distance and rebuffed him he could surely find a way of slowly overcoming them.

Logically he knew that just because he now knew what had caused her aversion to him that did not mean that anything would change, but emotionally his heart had cried out that surely it was impossible to love someone so much and for so long and for that love not to be returned. s.e.xually she was responsive to him. To him... Not to his cousin, not to anyone else... To him.

Now, as he saw the panic in her eyes and sensed how tempted she was to turn round and run, he reached out to her, shocked by the icy- cold tension of her skin.

"Your sister's here," he told her.

"Chrissie..."

She had flinched when he touched her, but she hadn't pulled away.

"She arrived in a bit of a state," he added, watching her.

"I gather the two of you had a bit of an upset..."

The dazed, frantic look was leaving her eyes now, the pupil no longer dilating quite so pain fully.

Why was it that, when she knew it was the most dangerous thing she could allow, she was letting him touch her... hold her? Rosie wondered bleakly. It wasn't just because the touch of his hand on her arm was warming, soothing.

Soothing... That wasn't what the rapid acceleration of her heartbeat was telling her.

"You're cold. Let's go inside."

Numbly she let him take charge, calmly ushering her inside.

She tensed on the threshold to the sitting- room, her eyes going instinctively and betrayingly to the Knole settee.

If Jake was aware of what she was doing, he gave no sign of it. Instead he was smiling at Chrissie, who was sitting on the edge of one of the fireside chairs, her expression strained and nervous.

"Rosie... I'm sorry about... about what happened earlier," Chrissie began, before Rosie could speak.

"Jake ... Jake has explained to me that he had asked you not to say anything until he'd completed the negotiations for selling his share of the marina business. He told me that you'd wanted to tell me, and that you had intended to do so this last weekend." She made a wry face.

"I suppose I didn't help, bursting out with our news about the baby the other Friday, not giving you a chance to get a word in edge ways.

I suppose I did rather over-react this morning. I should have realised you wouldn't deliberately keep something like this from me. It was just... just that I felt so hurt hearing it from someone else..."

"I know," Rosie told her contritely. The pain gripping her stomach muscles was beginning to ease. She had Jake to thank for Chrissie's calmer mood, she recognised, and for shouldering the blame for keeping their 'news' from her.

"I am pleased for you... of course," Chrissie continued, 'and I do understand why you both felt that you had to make your relations.h.i.+p public in view of what happened on Sunday. As Jake said, the last thing any of us would want is for people to start speculating that the two of you might be having some sordid secret affair."

She got up and walked across to Rosie, hugging her.

"I'm sorry, Rosie," she told her in a m.u.f.fled voice.

"I was rotten to you earlier. I came round here intending to tell Jake what I thought of the pair of you, and instead he made me see how difficult I was making things for you..."

Rosie didn't say anything. She couldn't. Every word Chrissie said to her was increasing her guilt tenfold.

It was left to Jake to take hold of her hand and draw her closer to him, close enough for him to place his arm around her waist, holding her against the warmth of his body, causing nervous, fluttery sensations of quicksilver ap prehension to race through her.

"We do understand, don't we, darling?"

As he spoke he turned to look at her, his free hand gently brus.h.i.+ng her hair back off her face and lingering against her skin just long enough to make her nerve-endings p.r.i.c.kle sensitively and her mouth feel as though it had started to swell slightly, as she remembered how she had felt when he kissed her.

He was looking at her mouth now, she recognised. Looking at it... and lowering his head as though... He couldn't possibly be going to kiss her, surely? Not in front of Chrissie? Not when they both knew...?

"Rosie..."

Her mouth quivered as she felt the warmth of his breath against her sensitive skin. Her eyes were already closing, her body turning in towards his, her hands pressed flat against his chest.

He kissed her gently, lingeringly, and the ache of need that pulsed inside her was so keen and sharp that for an instant she almost forgot that Chrissie was there, so great was her need to cling to him and return his kiss, to feel his mouth harden with pa.s.sion, to feel his body... Abruptly she surfaced from her dangerous fantasy, her face flushed with guilty heat.

Mercifully Jake wasn't watching her, and had turned away from her as he released her, but Chrissie was. And, as they looked at one another, Rosie recognised the message in her sister's eyes.

Chrissie knew that she loved him. She loved him! The shock seemed to go on forever, seeping into her slowly, briefly numbing her, and then receding, allowing the s.p.a.ce it had left behind to be filled with the raw acid burn of her terrified panic.

"Look, I'd better be going," she heard Chrissie saying but, as she turned automatically to go with her, Jake stopped her.

"I'll see you out," he told Chrissie.

"I'm sorry I made such a fuss," Chrissie apologised to her, giving her another hug.

"This baby is playing havoc with my hormones, I'm afraid... Still," she grinned at Jake, 'if you and Rosie don't waste too much time, he or she could have a cousin to grow up with."

She wanted to leave, to get away right now, to go somewhere where she could be alone to examine her pain in private... somewhere where she could lock herself away so no one else could see or suspect what was happening to her.

How could she be in love with Jake? Rosie asked herself helplessly as she watched him escort Chrissie to her car and knew that it was impossible for her to follow her.

She and Jake were supposed to be in love; she was in love... what woman in love would rush away from her lover, refusing the opportunity to share a few minutes' privacy with him? Especially after the way Jake had kissed her... a kiss which Chrissie had very obviously interpreted as a restrained expression of his de sire for her.

But she didn't want Jake to desire her. She didn't want him to touch her, kiss her, arouse her, expose her to the newly discovered dangers of her love for him.

No wonder he made her feel so on edge, so nervous... Had some part of her known all along... felt all along? Was that why she had reacted so intensely to him all those years ago?

Had something in her recognised it even then?

She heard Chrissie drive away.

Panic exploded inside her.

She didn't want to be on her own here with Jake.

But it was too late now to try to escape. She heard the front door

open and then close again, and her fear increased.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"I didn't realise your sister was expecting another child."

Rosie didn't look round as she heard Jake come into the room--she didn't dare; but as she heard the quiet calmness of his voice her panic was stoked by a sudden flare of anger.

He was taking things so calmly, so easily. Didn't he have any idea of what it was doing to her... of what he was doing to her?

As he studied her rigid back, Jake's heart sank. She didn't want to be here with him, he knew that. It hurt him, knowing how much she wanted to get away from him, but he clamped down on his desire to make things easier for her, to open the door and let her walk through it.

Deep inside him there was a growing awareness that there was another and far more important door that was locked and barred, holding her imprisoned behind it.

Was he deluding himself in believing that he might be able to help her find its key and set herself free?

There was such a lot of pain locked up in side her, such a burden of anguish and unhappiness. He had heard it in her voice the night she had told him she had conceived Ritchie's child, had seen it in her eyes just now when Chrissie had mentioned her own pregnancy.

He was a man and could only guess at how it felt to be a woman; he was afraid of being clumsy and careless, adding to what she was suffering rather than taking away from it, but he also knew that he could not stand by and watch her suffer the way she was doing right now.

It angered him on her behalf that no one else had seen that, suffering. Were they all blind, those who purported to care about her, or was it that his love for her made him extra specially perceptive of her feelings? Or was it that she had let down her guard more with him than she ever had with anyone else?

He took a deep breath, knowing that how ever gently he led up to it nothing was going to make it any easier for either of them.

"Rosie," he said quietly.

"There's something we need to discuss."

Rosie heard him, but made no response. Jake paused and, when she made no movement other than to stiffen her already eloquently taut, rejecting back, he cursed under his breath and continued as gently as he could, aching to reach out and touch her, to hold her, to protect her, but knowing that he must not do so.

"The other night you told me that you had conceived Ritchie's child...

What happened to that baby?"

Rosie felt the shock like the sudden impact of something so cold that.i.t almost burned. She wasn't prepared for this ... hadn't guessed...hadn't imagined. She had thought he wanted to discuss their supposedrelations.h.i.+p, not... Who did he think he was? What was he trying to doto her?

Hadn't he hurt her enough... more than enough over the years? What right did he have to pry into this, the most painful and private part of her life... her heart?

She felt the pain burn up inside her, the anger... the guilt... the bitterness.

She turned round, her eyes glittering with a mixture of tears and emotion, her voice raw as she choked out, "What do you think happened?

I killed it... I killed it..."

As he heard the agony in her voice Jake felt his scalp tauten and muscles tense. He could see what she was going through, hear it, feel it, taste it almost, on the emotion-laden air that enveloped her.

Instinctively he wanted to comfort her, to help her, to take away from her the appalling burden of her pain and guilt.

She had been a child, that was all, a child whose only guilt had been her own innocence, and yet she was punis.h.i.+ng herself as though she had been an adult.

"Rosie. Rosie.-you mustn't blame yourself. It wasn't your fault, youwere only a child. I know it must have hurt, having to take thedecision to have your pregnancy terminated, but He saw the colour leaveher face, her mouth twisting in a bitter, corrosive smile.

"But what? I did the right thing? Of course, you would think that,wouldn't you? How like a man..." She started to laugh, her voicesharp- edged with a hysteria that sent anxiety arcing through him.

"Well, it wasn't like that. I wasn't the one who made the decision.