Long Cold Winter. PENNY JORDAN

running, Yorke,’ Autumn told him, shrugging dismissively. ‘If you must know, I was tired. I’ve had a long day and now I want to go to bed.’

      It was a tactical mistake and she was annoyed with herself for making it. Yorke’s eyes gleamed silver-green in the darkness; the colour of the sea. Cat’s eyes, watching; waiting eyes.

      ‘So do I,’ he drawled mockingly.

      ‘I meant alone,’ Autumn told him without bothering to disguise her withdrawal. ‘I find I prefer it that way, especially in this climate.’ She dropped her shoes on the floor, sliding them on as though the increased inches gave her increased protection, but even so, the top of her head barely reached Yorke’s chin. She knew with a swift stab of satisfaction that her response had surprised him, even though he disguised it. The old Autumn would have been angry and defensive, backing away from him and defying him to touch her.

      ‘You’ve had experience, then?’ Yorke asked her silkily. ‘But not with friend Alan. You’ve never taken him to your bed, have you, Autumn?’

      ‘I don’t really think that’s any of your business,’ Autumn replied coolly, reaching up to switch on the light. ‘Do you?’

      She felt his indrawn breath, knowing without looking at him that he was angry. So she had pierced his guard. Good! Always in their past encounters he had driven her into a corner, defeating her with his logic and hard determination. Then she had lacked the weapons to fight him, a loser by virtue of her love for him. Now it was different.

      ‘Have you slept with him?’ Yorke demanded angrily, catching hold of her wrist with sudden violence.

      ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

      Autumn was reasonably sure that he would do no such thing, and her success went to her head. It was going to be easier than she had thought. She had allowed her imagination to build Yorke into a more formidable adversary than he actually was, forgetting that during the intervening years she had grown from an inexperienced adolescent, young for her years, into a woman.

      ‘Please give me my key and leave,’ she demanded coldly. ‘I have an early start in the morning.’

      ‘That cold, dismissive manner might work with other men,’ Yorke snarled at her, tightening his grip of her wrist, ‘but it doesn’t work with me, Autumn. I know too well what lies under that ice-cold exterior, and I haven’t followed you half way across the world to be dismissed and frozen out. Besides…’ his voice dropped huskily, his eyes wandering over in insolent appraisal, until she felt her lungs would burst with the effort of maintaining her slow even breathing, ‘we both know that the ice is just a façade, don’t we?’

      ‘What do you want? I’m not in the mood for games, Yorke. Just say your piece and then go.’

      His eyes darkened and for a moment Autumn felt the unleashed power of the anger her dismissal had aroused, and she knew that she had not overestimated the danger he represented—far from it. And then he was smiling mockingly, his eyes cruel, as his thumb circled the soft inner flesh of her wrist with insidious determination.

      ‘I want you, Autumn,’ he said softly.

      Once long ago that soft caress would have been sufficient to drive her into his arms, begging brokenly for the satisfaction only his lovemaking could bring, but now, after one deep, shuddering breath, she had herself under control, her eyes empty of everything but distaste as she stared at him.

      ‘Well, I don’t want you.’

      She sensed that her response had disconcerted him, although he recovered quickly, shielding his thoughts from her and watching her from beneath lowered lashes, his hard face unreadable.

      ‘Well, well, you’ve grown up with a vengeance, haven’t you?’ he drawled softly. ‘Anyone who didn’t know you could never guess that you’re as vulnerable as an oyster without its shell under all that surface toughness.’

      Somehow she managed to laugh, a light, silvery sound, her head thrown back challengingly to reveal the smooth, seductive arch of her throat.

      ‘You’re the one who doesn’t know me, Yorke. Two years is a long time, and the toughness, as you call it, isn’t just on the surface. It goes way, way down. God knows why you had to drag Alan into our private affairs, but I’ve already told him, I’m leaving Travel Mates as of tonight, and I shall be on the first available flight out of St Lucia. You and I have nothing to say to one another.’

      ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Yorke told her softly. ‘I’m going to see to that. And you’re not as tough as you like to pretend. You’ve forgotten, Autumn, I know everything there is to know about you.’

      She smiled again.

      ‘Not true, Yorke. You knew all there was to know about a girl called Autumn. That girl no longer exists. And you don’t know the first thing about the woman she’s become.’

      ‘Then perhaps I ought to start finding out,’ Yorke breathed huskily, but Autumn was too quick for him, freeing herself from his grasp and going to stand by the window.

      ‘Our marriage is over, Yorke, and all I want from you now is my freedom.’

      ‘That could be arranged.’

      She whirled round, staring at him.

      ‘You’ll agree to our divorce?’

      ‘I might, under certain conditions.’

      ‘What conditions?’ Autumn breathed, knowing the moment that she spoke that she had betrayed herself.

      ‘Not so changed after all,’ Yorke taunted. ‘You’re still as impetutous. I want you back, Autumn, as my wife, living in my home.’

      His words caught her off guard, and she flung at him bitterly. ‘Home? And where would that be, Yorke? The flat in Knightsbridge? The one you spent at least one night a month in, in between your business trips. Thanks, but no, thanks. There isn’t any way you could persuade me to go back to you. No prisoner ever enters the condemned cell twice.’

      ‘Is that what our marriage was to you? And yet you entered it willingly enough, as I remember; even to the extent of being quite prepared to anticipate its vows.’ His mouth twisted wryly at the dark colour flooding her skin.

      He was so arrogant, so sure of her capitulation, Autumn reflected angrily, staring out into the night. Over the last two years she had developed an armour against the past; an unscalable wall behind which she had dammed up everything that had happened, including the girl she had once been. Now Yorke was trying to tear down that wall.

      ‘Don’t try to pretend you ever cared about our marriage, Yorke,’ she said bitterly. ‘We both know that if I hadn’t left voluntarily when I did, you would have had me forcibly removed. You told me yourself that our marriage was a mistake and that I bored you. And it didn’t take you long to replace me either.’

      A shaft of pain lanced through her, as the past broke through the barriers, and she tensed automatically, as though by doing so she could hold it back.

      ‘Why didn’t you divorce me when I left?

      Yorke shrugged. ‘Why should I? A wife is an excellent deterrent against unwanted involvements.’

      His cynicism took her breath away.

      ‘But you don’t want me… you don’t love me…’

      The words fell between them and she wished them unsaid. They had been her tearful refrain to so many of their quarrels. ‘You don’t love me…’ And never once had he denied it.

      ‘I need you.’

      ‘Need me?’ She stared at him, her eyes darkening. ‘You never needed anyone in your entire life—you used to boast about it, telling me how invulnerable you were. I’ve built a new life for myself now, Yorke, and I don’t need you.’

      ‘Just my consent to our divorce, and I’d give