A Sudden Engagement. Penny Jordan

simply not in the same league as the Beverley Travers of this world,’ Kirsty supplied with a bitterness that surprised her.

      ‘Nowhere near it,’ Drew assured her mockingly. ‘Now come on, let’s get you tucked up in your little bed, before you go and drive some other unsuspecting male half crazy!’

      Those minutes in his arms when he had wanted her so much that he had been tense with the effort on containing it might never have been. All at once she had been relegated to the role of child, and irrationally she resented it.

      In the end Drew left her outside her room, but long after he had gone Kirsty lay awake reliving those emotions she had experienced in his arms, shivering at the knowledge that it had taken him to arouse them. A pure fluke, she assured herself, nothing more, and thank God she would never have to set eyes on him again. She didn’t think she could endure the humiliation. Bad enough if he had actually ‘raped’ her, as he described it, but in some ways worse to have been found out and rejected on the grounds of her innocence; to have fallen short of his requirements in a woman and be dismissed merely as a foolish child.

      She had heard other people describing virginity as a ‘turn-off, but this was the first time she had come across concrete evidence of the fact. Drew had desired her, she knew that, but the moment he realised that she was still a virgin his desire had gone. Kirsty writhed in a torment of mortified chagrin; somehow the swift death of his desire made her feel a failure as a woman, a freak almost. What was the matter with her? she asked herself. She ought to be thanking her lucky stars. Self-disgust rose up inside her. What on earth had happened to her belief that physical desire was nothing without love? Why had she responded in the first place? Had perhaps fear released an adrenalin into her blood which had led to that warm, yielding tide of desire? That must be the explanation. Feeling happier, Kirsty closed her eyes. If she was honest she was forced to admit that she had been foolish enough to go to Drew Chalmers’ suite, but having done so and endured the after-effects, all she wanted to do now was to put the whole affair behind her, and forget about the incident completely. She could only thank her lucky stars that her path and Drew’s were hardly likely to cross again!