Unable to find Ritchie, he had automatically gone upstairs, searching his cousin's bedroom first, only alerted to the fact that someone was in his aunt and uncle's by the light s.h.i.+ning beneath the door.

Ritchie had been standing beside the bed, fully dressed, when he walked in, but Rosie... He gripped hold of the steering-wheel as the echoes of the emotions he had felt then surged through him.

She had been lying motionless in the bed, sated by his cousin's lovemaking, he had thought, her clothes in disarray. He couldn't remember actually moving across to the bed, only the look on her face as she turned and saw him.

The savage jealousy which had possessed him had sickened him. If she had wanted so desperately to experiment with s.e.x, what the h.e.l.l had made her choose his cousin? he had wanted to ask her... Why hadn't she come to him?

But he had already known the answer, of course. She barely even knew that he existed. She probably believed herself to be in love with his cousin and, knowing that Ritchie was shortly leaving the country, that she was un likely ever to see him again, she had wanted to consummate that love.

Later he was glad that the width of the bed had separated him from Ritchie, otherwise, he suspected, he might not have been able to control the savage murderous impulse which had possessed him.

That he had been jealous blindingly, achingly, tormentedly jealous of his cousin had been one thing and bad enough; that he should have physically wanted to punish him, to destroy him almost, because of that jealousy had been another.

He remembered the terrified white-faced look Rosie had given him once she had pulled her clothes on; then he had thought it was that she had recognised what he had been feeling... Now... He glanced at her. Her eyes were open now, but she was looking away from him, out of the window.

To discover that she had not gone willingly with Ritchie as he had believed, to hear her say that her drink had been deliberately spiked, that his cousin had deliberately planned to hurt and humiliate her...

to hear her accuse him of being a part of the reason why she had said nothing... nothing... of what had happened... had made no complaint...

no protest... And this afternoon he had seen in her face confirmation, if he had needed it, of just exactly what she did feel about his cousin.

Why had he been so blind? Why hadn't he realised then...?

Why hadn't he questioned events more deeply? Why, out of his love for her, had he not somehow known what she had chosen to keep hidden from him... from everyone...?

When she had needed him most, when she might have turned to him as a confidant and a friend, through his own behaviour he had caused her instead to turn away from him, to believe that he despised, condemned her.

Even if he had not loved her he could never have done that.

She had been a child... a baby still.

But she had not been a child the day he had gone to see if there had been any repercussions from her relations.h.i.+p with his f.e.c.kless cousin.

Then she had been all woman, cold, distant, remote, while her eyes blazed her defiance and bitterness.

He had thought then that she had somehow blamed him because Ritchie had gone, never coming close to realising what she was really feeling.

But he knew now!

His face hardened as he turned into the private road that led to the small, exclusive development of houses of which his own was one.

Rosie, turning her head to protest again that she had no wish to go home with him nor to listen to anything he might want to say, saw his expression and, shocked by the harshness of it, instead said nothing.

She was still suffering the effects of her run- in with Ritchie, she told herself shakily, as Jake brought his car to a halt on the brick-set drive to his house.

The house, although modern, was built on traditional lines, and like its neighbors was set in a mature wooded landscape, so that the warmth of its brick faa de blended comfortably with its green backdrop.

His manners, at least, were very different from his cousin's, Rosie

acknowledged, as Jake opened the car door for her and waited courteously for her to get out. Where Ritchie had terrified her with his physical strength and brutality, Jake intimidated her with his watch fill distancing of himself from her, with the contempt she had believed he had always felt for her.

She had been conscious of that watchful distance even before he had found her with Ritchie, nervously wondering what it was she had done wrong that made him focus on her like that.

She had been in awe of him even before that night, she admitted as she waited for him to unlock his front door.

But she wasn't in awe of him any more. Why should she be?

And she wasn't going to allow him to intimidate and browbeat her into retracting what she had said about Ritchie.

The house had a good-sized rectangular hallway, immaculately decorated and furnished but bare of any signs of being lived in.

There was no evidence of any family clutter, no pictures, no flowers, none of the things which, in Rosie's view, went to make a home.

As though he had read her mind, Jake turned his head and said wryly, "Sterile, isn't it? That's partly because I'm away so much in Greece, and partly because Mrs. Lindow, who comes in to clean for me once a week, says she "can't be doing with clutter and flowers making a mess all over the place"."

"I can see her point," Rosie responded tact fully.

"But you'd have them anyway... mess not withstanding."

His comment startled her. She looked up at him, confused by the expression in his eyes, but still unwilling to admit how often she did buy flowers, simply for the pleasure that seeing and smelling them gave her, and then kept them even when their petals had actually started to fall, reluctant to condemn them to the dustbin until the very last one had died.

"I thought we'd be more comfortable in the sitting-room," she heard Jake saying as he opened one of the doors off the hallway and waited for her to precede him into the room.

Like the hall, it was immaculately decorated and furnished, and like the hall it too was somehow too perfect and sterile, apart from the huge Knole settee in front of the fire.

"It belonged to my grandmother," Jake told her, watching her study it.

"The designer who organised the decor here for me wanted to throw it out, but I wouldn't let her. Instead we compromised and had it recovered, although in some ways I still prefer the original scuffed velvet..."

"It looks very comfortable," Rosie responded inanely.

Why was he treating her like this, al most... almost gently, as though he was concerned ... afraid for her... ?

"It is," he a.s.sured her.

"Try it..."

Without ever having intended to do so, Rosie discovered that she was

sitting down on the settee and being dwarfed by the depth and comfort of it.

She heard Jake laugh.

"You look like a little girl on her best behaviour at her grand mother's Sunday tea party," he told her.

Rosie flushed because that was exactly how she had been feeling, uncomfortably aware of the elegance of the settee's silk covering and the fact that her lack of height meant that when she sat back in it her feet could not comfort ably reach the ground.

"You can't sit on it like that," Jake told her.

"Take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable "Oh, no ... I couldn't... the fabric..."

"The fabric is only fabric," Jake told her wryly.

"Possessions are never more important than people. We've got a lot to

talk about, Rosie. Would you like something to eat? You missed the

buffet at the Simpsons'."

Rosie shook her head, knowing that, despite the fact that she had eaten nothing since her breakfast, she was far too on edge to do so now.

"A drink then ... tea ... coffee...?"

Why didn't he just get on with it? Rosie wondered grimly.

Was he deliberately playing on her tension, trying to gain the upper

hand so that when the crunch came...?

She shook her head.

"Well, I'm going to have something," she heard him say.

"I.

shan't be a minute."

He was barely that, returning just as she had finally decided she couldn't stand the excruciating agony of either sitting with her back ramrod-straight or being unable to bend her knees and had admitted that he was right and that the only way she was going to be able to sit comfortably on the settee was if she're moved her shoes and curled up on it.

She was just doing this when he walked in, carrying a bottle of wine and two gla.s.ses.

When he filled them both and offered one to her, she shook her head.

"It's only wine," he told her mildly. Instantly her face was suffused with colour, as she wondered if he was deliberately taunting her with what she had told him about her drink being spiked the night of the party. She couldn't tell him that alcohol was something she never touched. It would make her look too weak and vulnerable.

Instead, reluctantly, she accepted the gla.s.s from him. The dark red liquid glowed richly in its plain gla.s.s, the only touch of colour in the otherwise neutral room. When she held the gla.s.s in her hand, the liquid almost seemed to warm her flesh through it.

She took a sip, surprised to discover how much she liked the warm, fruity taste.

It was only wine, she reminded herself, and only one gla.s.s, and then, as Jake seated him self at the other end of the settee and turned to face her, she took another nervous sip.

This was it. This was the moment when he challenged her, demanding that she retract what she had said about Ritchie.

"Rosie.-the night of the party "I don't care what you say to me... how much pressure you put on me, I'm not going to change what I said," she told him fiercely.

"What I told you was the truth."

"Yes, I know..."

His quiet words silenced her. She stared at him and then took a hasty, tense gulp of her wine, grateful for the warmth that spilled through her from it, driving out the icy fingers clutching apprehensively at her muscles.

"You... You believe me..."

He nodded his head and she felt a huge surge of emotion rush through her. She took another gulp of wine.