Escape Me Never. Sara Craven

it was difficult, she found, keeping her mind on her work for once. It kept straying, almost obsessively, back to her various encounters with Rohan Grant, analysing them, trying to discover why she’d reacted to him as she had. Remembering particularly that last confrontation when he had told her openly that he intended to seduce her. Remembering his touch—that brief kiss with painful, disturbing clarity.

      She thrust the pad and pen away from her with hands that shook. Fool, she castigated herself. He didn’t mean it—any of it. He was just having a little game at your expense, because you annoyed him by turning him down. He decided he’d give you something to think about, and by sitting brooding like this over his nonsense, you’re playing right into his hands.

      She looked round the living room and sighed. The flat wasn’t large, but it was enough for her needs and Jodie’s and she’d become casually fond of the place. Now, the walls seemed to be closing in on her, making her feel trapped—restless.

      She bit her lip. Maybe she should take Mrs Barrett up on her eager offers to babysit. She had the theatre next week to look forward to, but there were other things too. The cinema, for one instance, and Roger and his wife for another. They were always inviting her for meals, and she’d usually refused, terrified that they might try to matchmake by inviting some spare man of their acquaintance. And yet what had she to fear from such casual meetings?

      Staying in alone was no safeguard, and nor was wearing deliberately dowdy clothes. Her real security was Brett’s memory, and the knowledge that, after him, there could never be another man for her.

      The past. Her secret armour against the world—and against a man like Rohan Grant in particular.

      She bought a new dress for the theatre trip, a silky turquoise thing with a loosely bloused top. Oh, Barney, what did you start, she thought, as she stared back at the attractive stranger she saw in the fitting room mirror.

      It got Jodie’s unqualified approval too.

      ‘You look like a fairy princess,’ she said ecstatically. ‘Are you going with that man?’

      Cass smiled at her. ‘I’m going with a man, darling, but not that one. A very nice man, too,’ she added as Jodie’s face visibly drooped.

      Lloyd was proving to be extremely pleasant company. He didn’t try to monopolise her at work, but they’d had lunch a couple of times together. She’d almost invited him to call for her at the flat, instead of meeting in the foyer, but decided to stick to the prior arrangement. It wouldn’t be fair, she thought, to arouse hopes in Lloyd which she had no intention of fulfilling.