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'No?' he repeated, and again the word was a question. She frowned and opened her

mouth to pursue it, but he forestalled her with another question. 'Tell me, would you still

have done it to someone who did, as you say, deserve it?'

That brought her eyes up, large and revealingly bewildered as she replied with difficulty,

'I—probably not. My thinking has—changed too much. I'm no longer quite so arrogant.'

'Funnily enough,' he said, so lightly, holding her eyes, 'neither am I. Kirstie, if other

people are prepared to forgive you for your mistakes, don't you think you can learn to

forgive yourself?'

Hearing that mellifluous voice of his shape her name, as always, felt as if he pulled her

out of herself. The compelling sensation flared in her eyes an instant before she parried

his penetrating observances with a question of her own. 'What makes you think I haven't

already?'

'I know too well how you are ruthless with yourself, far more so than with others. You

make allowances for people that you refuse to make for yourself. It was only because

you thought I was so reprehensible that you felt compelled to do something. Would you

like dessert?' he asked, with another of those disconcerting switches of subject.

Brought back to the present, she found, to her surprise, that her meal was completely

gone. 'Er—no, thank you.'

'Coffee, then?'

'Yes, please.'

She began to gather her silverware together and was detained by his warm, firm grasp on

her wrist. 'No, leave it. I told you: I have this fairy godmother, and she's getting paid

overtime to come in this evening.

You wouldn't want to do the lady out of her gambling money, would you?'

Kirstie had to laugh at that and let the silverware remain in its place, while Francis went

back to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. She was left alone, and the room around her

settled into silence.

Don't you think you can learn to forgive yourself?

Kirstie stood slowly, and slowly she turned towards the hot sunlight shining on the

balcony. She stepped out and leaned against the solid concrete waist-high wall to look

down at the street below. Distant honks and traffic noises wafted up; more real were the

flocks of birds that perched on and swooped from power lines, and the tops of the trees

in Central Park.

Francis had spoken with keener wisdom than perhaps he knew. Even their differing

reactions to the basement garage pointed to it. He didn't need her guilt, nor did he want

it. He had as much as said so. She couldn't eradicate what had happened by carrying it

with her wherever she went. It was indeed time to let it go, time to stop trying to make

amends.

It was also time to stop fooling herself, for, if guilt had been her crutch, so too had it

been the easiest, most acceptable reason for agreeing to see Francis again. She had never

dealt properly with how devastating she found him to her self-control and self-

containment. She was drawn to him, sexually, intellectually and emotionally, and had

been even back as early as the time spent in Vermont. It was the most powerful pull

towards another human being she had ever experienced, and the implications tumbling

outwards from that realisation alone frightened her to death.

CHAPTER NINE

SHE sensed him before she heard him, standing silently at the open balcony door behind

her, and with a quick reflexive turn of her head she saw that she had caught him off

guard.

Reaction tumbled inwards and broke barriers. She wanted to say to him, This was an

accident. You weren't supposed to see what was in my eyes, just as I never meant to

surprise that look in yours.

Her gaze was wide and wondering, like a child's. His was patient. A breeze caught the

light curtains in the doorway and moulded it over half his torso and one shoulder, and as

he moved forward it slid rippling away.

He covered the distance between them in quiet, contained steps. One of his hands came

under her chin and cradled the fragile shape, and he tilted her face up. His eyes roamed

each sculptured bone, touched her own grey gaze in a question, became fixated on her

mouth. He started to bend his head.

He never rushed her; he never hurried. Kirstie had blundered along the entire wild range

of emotions throughout his languid movements, from startlement, to fear, to flinching

anxiety. Now his impossible deliberation shattered her resolve. There was nowhere for

her to turn, no form of steadfast principle, nothing to override the compulsion. She

tumbled into blind action, wound both arms around his neck, pulled his head down the

rest of the way and offered him her mouth.

Francis's composure disintegrated. A groan pierced his body, and with unthinking need

he clutched her hips to haul her against him. Her knees malfunctioned. She gave into

desire and moulded herself to the hard, curved support of his strong body. His hands ran

up her back, their urgent pressure wrecking the neat, tucked-in blouse, which came free

from her belt and let him explore the contours and hollows of her flesh. His tongue

stroked hers with eager tenderness, then he gnawed, concentrated and delicate, on the

full, sensitive curve of her bottom lip.

Her craving turned rabid. She shuddered down her entire length and let her head fall to

his shoulder.

He broke from the luscious ravishment of her lips to dive down the angle of her neck

and tease aside the collar of her blouse. He felt as if he had a fever. He felt and reacted

as if this had never happened to him before, as if all the other times they had come

together in physical need had never been, as if this were the first, the most precious, the

only time of his life.

She turned her face into his gleaming black hair and hardly noticed as he peeled open

the buttons of her blouse with trembling, barely restrained care. Then the blouse fell

open and for the first time he feasted upon the slight curve of her small breasts, and the

quiet, heartfelt sound that came from him then sent her arcing in instinctive reaction into

the soft caress of his hands.

She was lost, so lost, melting into the flaming sensation of liquid pleasure that flickered

as his fingers flickered, across her tight pink nipples, coursing through her body. She

gasped as, with one muscle-flexing surge, he wrapped one powerful arm around her

slender waist and lifted her effortlessly up so that his hungry mouth could nip, and

suckle, and stroke across her breasts.

It was an exquisite, voluptuous agony that couldn't last. Pleasure combined with an ache

in her lower back, caused by the strain of their postures, but still she willed the moment

never to end, as she bowed head and shoulders over his own bent head and held his face

against her. When at last he had to let her sink slowly back until her feet touched the

ground, her body slid hard along the quivering length of his so that they both cried out in

mutual loss, and he drowned it away in the excesses of yet another explorative kiss.

Yes, she was lost, careening wildly through a smoky labyrinth towards a molten core,

recognising at last the nature of the compulsion which disregarded creed, barriers, life—

called love.

No. In her heart and in her head she said it.

An echo of the whisper, hoarsely, from Francis, still trapped in the labyrinth, 'Do you

have any idea how long it's been since I have made love to a woman?'

'Oh, God!' she cried, in deepest torment. Made love?

No.

'I want to suck you slowly,' he muttered in her ear. 'I want to bury myself in you so

deeply I'll never come out. I want to pull you on top of me, take hold of your thighs '

'Stop it!' Pain, to stop it. She struggled against the tidal wave and panted, despairingly,

'Oh, Francis, it isn't right!'

His head jerked back, as if he were a puppet on a string. Was he too far gone to hear the

voice of reason?

It isn't right until it is made right.

There was too much that was uncertain, undefined, and too much of herself was at stake.

If they drank now, heedless of all else in their lives, what they partook of could well turn

to poison, and she didn't know if they could survive it. Meaning to push him away, she

brought her hands to his chest. By some inexplicable accident, by her own inherent

weakness, when they touched him they stroked taut, shirt-covered muscles.

His whole body shuddered. He grasped her hands so hard that the bones ground together.

'God
don't do that!'
he cried. 'I have about as much control right now as a fifteen-year-

old virgin!'

Control was what she was striving for. Dark colour suffused her cheeks, then left her

dizzy with desertion and. marble-cold, marble-white. She dragged away from his

bruising grip and fumbled to put her clothing to rights, shakily tucking her blouse into

place. 'This isn't right,' she forced out, parrot-like.

The balcony, the air, even the birds were still. 'Why isn't it?' he asked very quietly.

'This—this preoccupation,' she began.

'Quite an interesting euphemism,' he said, and the mocking, angry taunt was so accurate,

hurt so much, that her eyes flashed hot diamond at him.

'Would you prefer that I call it
corrosive obsession?'
she lashed, and as it whipped across

his face she saw that she had given every bit as much hurt as she had sustained. 'If we

sink into this, we won't be dealing with issues, we will be ignoring basic problems. . .'

His restraint now was total; he had what she had tried for and had failed to achieve:

control. 'What are the problems?' Again, very quietly.

'Our lives!' She was too wrapped up in her own agitation to notice how silken he had

gone, and to remember how dangerous that quality of his was. 'What about Louise?'

'Ah, yes. Louise again,' he murmured, and the silk-covered glove struck. 'We must

always remember to consider her thoughts and her feelings. After all, looking after

Louise is one of the things you do best, isn't it?'

'What?' Kirstie turned back to him, and she retreated a step under the sight of his

volcanic fury.

'What kind of life do you have, anyway?' he snarled. 'Or do you have one at all, that's

more to the point! Perhaps you get your kicks vicariously by watching Louise's dramas!

And when she crooks her little finger or throws a tantrum you just go running back! It's

such a good excuse for not venturing out on your own, isn't it?'

Francis, watching, had not thought it possible for her to go even whiter, but she did, and

said between rage-stiffened lips, 'How dare you attack me like that? You know nothing

about my life, nothing!'

'No?' Francis leaned back against the stone support of the balcony wall. 'It looks like a

pretty clear picture from where I'm standing.'

'In fact,' Kirstie said, succinct away from that sensual, riotous confusion, 'I'm beginning

to wonder if you know anything at all. My consideration for Louise is irrefutable, but do

you still think that I am the same blindly loyal person I was in Vermont. Yes, I would

protect her from malice, but I would also protect myself from her malice. She is, after

all, a fact of my life, and only one of many. Did you think you could have me, now,

without all that entails? And was I supposed to fall into your bed just this once,

regardless of the future, your responsibilities, your work that you have made your life?'

His attack had brought no tears; it had, after all, been reaction to her own ungentle

disentanglement. But now, as realisation left him visibly stricken, she found her cheeks

grow wet. 'It isn't right until it is made right. It isn't even yet a matter of what the

answers are, but what the questions are, and each of us getting our priorities straight.'

Passion, fury, that brief contempt had died. Keeping well away from her—not a retreat,

she knew, but a conscious consideration—Francis said, his eyes very dark, 'Of course

you're right. Please forgive me.'

But she shook her head in denial and whispered, 'We hurt each other.'

He moved, made as if to speak, and the tears still fell sparkling from the ever-changing

grey of her eyes, for she knew that this was the moment he, in possession of his mind

and not his senses, would either retreat forever or take that first fateful step forward, and,

God help her, she did not know if she had the strength to face his retreat.

The telephone in the living-room shrilled, shockingly obnoxious in the charged, waiting

atmosphere. They both stared at each other, rigid, and Francis turned his head aside to

spit a curse with soft vehemence. He strode through the open balcony door, snatched up

the phone receiver, bit out, 'Yes?' then snapped, 'I told you I wasn't to be disturbed! As

far as the office is concerned, I'm still at lunch! I don't damned well care if it is Tokyo—

oh, for God's sake! All right—all right! I'll take the call here!' He hung up and turned to

look at her framed in the doorway, his expression bleak. 'I have to take this call.'

It was not such a blow after all, merely cold. Kirstie felt the winter ice spread through

her body and knew that she hadn't expected anything else. She said quietly, 'I quite