Life... fate... my baby the baby I'd told constantly since I knew I was carrying it that I hated was the one who did that..."

Rosie saw from his face that he didn't understand what she was saying.

"I miscarried," she told him harshly.

"I lost the baby by accident. It knew, you see. It knew it wasn't loved."

Silently Jake watched the tears pouring down her face, cursing himself for his cra.s.sness, his stupidity, his lack of insight. Why on earth hadn' the guessed... realised... ?

He loved her. He should have sensed... known... For all these years she had contained the pain that was now spilling out from her, years when he could have reached out to her, could have should have been there to help her... to hold her... even if it could only have been as a friend.

Why hadn't he realised, that day he had gone to see her, to check if there had been any repercussions as he had so clinically put it, that she was lying to him, that she was afraid... that she was alone and facing a trauma which would blight her whole life?

If he had not been so wrapped up in his own feelings, his own jealousy, his blind, prejudiced belief that she thought herself to be in love with Ritchie, might he not with his sup posed maturity have seen that she was concealing something, that she was afraid?

Couldn't he have found a way to encourage her to confide in him, to lean on him ... to draw support from him?

She could have had her baby. He would have gladly provided her with all the support she might have needed... all the love. Given the chance, he would have married her and loved them both, but he had turned his back on her, left her to suffer... "My baby died because I didn't want it. I killed it by denying it my love... but I did love it..."

He couldn't stand any more.

He crossed the s.p.a.ce that divided them, taking her in his arms, ignoring her attempts to push him away, wrapping his arms around her so tightly that she couldn't move, holding her, rocking her, telling her that she wasn't to blame, that these things happened... that of course she had loved her baby and that of course he or she had known that.

"If anyone is to blame it must be me," he told her.

Rosie stiffened.

"You..."

She had stopped crying now, but she was still trembling. Her body felt weak and cold, hollow and empty, drained. She felt much as she had done after her miscarriage, she recognised light-headedly, as though there was an empty s.p.a.ce inside her which had previously been filled but, whereas with her miscarriage she had ached with pain over that emptiness, with this one there was a sense of release, of relief.

She tried to concentrate on what Jake was saying. How could it be his fault?

"That day when I came to see you...1 should have guessed... should have seen--' "But there wasn't anything to see," Rosie told him.

"I--'.

Jake shook his head.

"I didn't mean that kind of "seeing", Rosie... I meant..."

He stopped abruptly, causing her to frown up at him.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter," he told her.

"What does matter is you, and the way you've blamed yourself... suffered... You were very young, Rosie. Perhaps your body simply wasn't fully ready for motherhood."

Rosie ducked her head. He was only reiterating what they had told her at the hospital. Then she had felt too much guilt, too much anguish to listen to them, but now logically she knew that both they and he were probably right.

That didn't lessen her sorrow, though. Her sorrow... Not her guilt... not that agonising, clawing mixture of anger and misery which she had been suffering so frequently and in tensely recently; that, she recognised, had gone, leaving behind it a kinder, gentler emotion.

Had that change been brought about simply by the act of talking about what had happened, by giving vent to her emotions, by being able for the first time to actually acknowledge what had happened... what she had felt... by acknowledging the right of her child to have a proper place in her past and her memories, in stead of being hidden away, his or her existence denied?

Jake was still holding her. She tried to move away discreetly but, far from relaxing, his arms actually seemed to tighten a little more securely around her.

It felt good being held like this by him, her body supported by his, surrounded by its warmth, its protection, his heartbeat soothing the frantic pace of her own. In her dreams she had imagined being held like this, she recognised, had craved this kind of male comfort and warmth, had longed for someone who would hold her, listen to her, understand her ... love her... Immediately she tensed. Jake did not love her. He felt compa.s.sion for her, and a certain amount of guilt, but he did not love her.

And she was not a child, not a teenager any longer, even if the emotions she had been're living... venting in his arms had belonged to that era of her life. She was a woman, an adult, and it was time that she put the past behind her, accepted that there was no going back and altering it, accepted that her perceptions of it were coloured by the emotions she had felt then, by the immaturity which had been a part of her then.

She had believed that Jake despised her, condemned her for what she had done, but she had learned now that he had done no such thing. Couldn't she just as easily have allowed her guilt over her miscarriage to be equally biased and destructive? She would never forget her child, never cease regretting that she had lost it, but somehow now that loss was easier to accept, that pain easier to endure now that she shared it with someone else.

For years she had focused all her antipathy and bitterness on Jake; she must not make the mistake now of forcing him to become some kind of emotional support system for her, especially not when she knew that she loved him.

Right now he felt responsible for her... and responsive to her? It would be dangerously easy to use those feelings and to try to convince them both that they could become some thing else.

Some deep-seated feminine instinct told her that it would be the easiest thing in the world right now to increase Jake's awareness of her, to trade on his obvious compa.s.sion for her. All it would take was for her to lift her head, to look at him... to look at his mouth... She felt the tremor of her own body and acknowledged, with a small pang of shock for her previous lack of awareness, how very strong her physical and emotional responses would be once they were aroused, how very, very much she wanted right now to make love with Jake.

To set the final seal upon the past and free herself completely from it? Or because she loved him... because a part of her was ready to use the smallest excuse it could find to encourage him to want her?

It wouldn't be all that difficult; physically he was responsive to her, aware of her... physically he desired her.

She wasn't sure how she knew that, but she did know it, sensed it, felt it, and in a female way was proud because of it.

But to encourage that desire, to take it and make use of it, would ultimately damage them both, but most especially her.

She wasn't strong enough for a relations.h.i.+p which would be based on such a dangerously destructive mixture of compa.s.sion and desire on his part, and love and need on hers.

No, if there were ever to be that kind of intimate relations.h.i.+p in her life, then it must be based on emotions that were equally balanced. And besides, to allow... to encourage Jake to make love to her when she knew how widely different their reasons for making love would be would be to cheat and deceive him.

Jake heard her sigh, and felt her lift herself away from him. This time when she pressed firmly against his chest, silently demanding that he release her, he complied.

"I'm sorry," she told him shakily.

"Don't be," he responded.

"There's no need."

He had released her fully now. She was just about to step back from him and turn away when he said softly, "Rosie..."

"Yes?"

She looked up at him and then tensed as she saw the way he was looking back at her, at her mouth... just as she had so recently imagined he might do.

Quickly she turned on her heel, terrified of giving in to her need to fling herself back into his arms and whisper to him how much she wanted him... loved him.

"I ... I must go..."

Jake saw her to her car, and then stood watching her until she had driven out of sight.

The phone was ringing as Rosie let herself into her house.

She dropped her bag and ran to answer it, a small thrill of disappointment stabbing through her when she realised it wasn't Jake but Chrissie.

"Rosie.-.I've had a wonderful idea," Chrissie announced.

"Why don't you have your engagement party here in the garden? There's ma.s.ses of room. We could hire a marquee An engagement party. Rosie's heart sank, but she couldn't summon the energy to dampen Chrissie's enthusiasm, nor to destroy the olive branch she knew her sister was extending to her.

"It sounds a marvelous idea," she fibbed weakly.

"But I'm not sure what Jake's plans are..."

Promising Chrissie that she would discuss the party with him, she replaced the receiver.

Chrissie was her sister, she reminded her self, and it was unfair of her to s.h.i.+ft the responsibility for persuading her to drop her plans for an engagement party on to Jake's shoulders, but he seemed to have the knack of dealing with her sister. Chrissie listened to him and obviously respected his judgement, while she had always considered Rosie to be her 'little sister' and still tended to treat her accordingly An engagement party... Wistfully Rosie tried not to dwell on how different things would be if she and Jake really were planning to marry... if he really did love her.

Enough of that, she told herself firmly. She had plenty of other things to think about, such as work. It was too late to return to the office now, but she had plenty of paperwork she could do here at home.

She went into her sitting-room and switched on the fire, opening the flap of her pretty walnut bureau which she had inherited from her grandmother and sitting down to work.

At nine o'clock Rosie stopped working to make herself a light supper. After she had finished eating and cleared away, she went back to her work, switching on the sitting-room lamps as she did so. The summer light had started to fade, and as she pa.s.sed in front of her sitting-room window she saw a car coming down the road.

When she realised it was Jake's, her heart missed a beat.

He had probably only come round because Chrissie had been on to him about her wretched party, she told herself as she went to let him in.

She opened the door before he rang the bell, standing back to let him in.

"Has Chrissie ?"

"Rosie, there's something Both of them stopped.

"You first," Jake offered.

The way he was smiling at her made her feel as though she had suddenly been wrapped in something warm and cheris.h.i.+ng, Rosie reflected shakily. It was an unfamiliar experience for her, and a dangerously beguiling one, betraying her into responding to Jake's warmth with a smile that made him catch his breath in love and hope.

Quickly she told him about Chrissie's phone-call, pulling a wry face as she admitted, "I'm afraid I used you as an excuse for not going ahead."

"I've had Naomi plaguing me, wanting to know if we've set a wedding date yet," Jake told her.

"I've referred her to you..."

Rosie laughed.

"That wasn't why I came to see you, though..."

Rosie paused in the act of ushering him into her sitting-room.

"I was worried about you... being on your own after what happened this afternoon..." He had turned his head away from her as though half ashamed of his own concern for her, his voice slightly m.u.f.fled.

As she watched him, Rosie was over whelmed with emotion. He was so caring, this man, so completely the opposite of all the things she had once thought him. Why hadn't she realised sooner... known sooner that...?

That what? That she loved him.

Tears p.r.i.c.ked her eyes. This was so un fair... so... so unendurable, after all she had al ready endured.

She turned her head away from him, afraid that he might somehow read the truth in her eyes.

"That... that was thoughtful of you..."

How formal she sounded, how distant, but she couldn't, dared not, let him see what she was really feeling.

"Rosie... About... about the baby..."

She tensed immediately.

"You have every right to mourn him or her, you know, every right to grieve... Forgive me if I'm saying or doing the wrong thing, but I just wanted you to know that if you can't bring yourself to talk about it to anyone else, someone closer to you... well, I'm always here, you know..."

She hadn't meant it to happen... hadn't planned for it, hadn't encouraged it in any way at all, but as she turned towards him he must have taken a couple of steps towards her.

"Rosie..."

The way he said her name made her whole body quiver. She looked up at him and knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to do.

He wanted her she could see it in his face, read it in the way his glance dropped slowly to her mouth.

She could have stopped it even then, could have turned away from him, stepped back from him, filled the tense silence with some comment which would have banished the tension between them, but she did none of those things; instead she looked back at him, deliberately letting her own glance linger on his mouth, knowing, as surely as she knew that he could see the warm flush staining her skin, that he knew what she was offering him.

There was no rush, no awkwardness, simply the sensation of being enfolded in his arms, followed by the warmth of his mouth slowly caressing her own, exploring and caressing it, as delicately as though he thought she was something precious and fragile with which he had to take great care.

Hesitantly she opened her mouth and kissed him back, unsure at first, her heart thudding frantically fast; and then, after he had responded to her, shown her, whispered to her how much he wanted her, how much he needed her, her confidence grew, her aching need for him driving out the warning voices urging her to stop now before it was too late.

Only it was already too late. It had been too late from the first moment he touched her. Now she had no de fences against the combined emotional and physical longing for him. When he touched her, her body trembled violently in response.

He kissed her mouth and then her throat, his hands warm against her body, tender and patient not rus.h.i.+ng or forcing her. As she clung to him, she could feel the heat coming off his body, sense the desire he was straining to control but strangely the knowledge of his desire neither alarmed her nor filled her with distaste, as had always been the case in the past with other men.

Neither, when he kissed her, did she see behind her shuttered eyelids an image of his cousin tainting her pleasure in his touch, destroying her ability to respond to him.

"Open your eyes, Rosie," he told her huskily, as he kissed the corner of each eye.

"I want you to look at me when I touch you. I want you to see me when I kiss you... I want you to know who it is who's making love to you."