Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

eyes across a crowded room stuff, which you’ve waxed lyrical about ever since—that was just so much moonshine, was it? You know, you’re really a very good actor, Geraint—’

      ‘No, Lola!’ His voice sounded savage now, teetering on the edge of control. ‘I went to the clubhouse with the intention of meeting you, yes, but—’

      ‘But what? With what goal in mind?’ she demanded acidly. ‘Revenge, I presume? A desire to seek some kind of redress for the sister you considered to have been done out of her rightful inheritance? Isn’t that it?’

      ‘At first, yes,’ he admitted. ‘Although I hadn’t really thought it through properly. Catrin was upset at Peter’s death, and I was angry. It was too easy to put you into the category of being a young and manipulatively beautiful seductress who had persuaded Peter Featherstone to leave his house to you.’ His voice deepened. ‘And then I met you—’

      ‘Oh, please!’ Lola turned away from him in disgust and sucked a dry, painful breath into her lungs. ‘Spare me the sweeteners, Geraint—I really don’t think I’m in the mood to stomach them right now!’

      ‘Lola, please listen to me—’

      She whirled round, her face contorted with anger and shame. ‘No, I won’t listen to you! I’ve listened enough and I’m sick to my stomach! In fact, you can damned well listen to me! You can say what you want about not having thought things through, but I don’t believe you!

      ‘You walked into the tennis club that night, took one look at me and decided that turning the charm on was a sure-fire way of getting me to fall under your spell! You did that knowing that you are an extremely good-looking man who probably never needs to even lift a finger to get any woman to come running!

      ‘And as for someone like me, someone who isn’t used to dealing with men like you, well. . .’ she gave him a sad, wistful smile ‘. . . I never really stood a chance, did I?’

      ‘Lola, it wasn’t like that—’

      ‘Yes, it was!’ she yelled. ‘You know damned well it was! Admit it, Geraint! At least be man enough to admit it to me!’

      There was silence, a fraught, angry silence as they eyed each other warily.

      Eventually he spoke. ‘Revenge may have been at the forefront of my mind at the very beginning. I admit that the idea of me blindly reaching out for some form of primitive retribution was extremely gratifying—but that was nothing more than a temporary form of madness. Very temporary. And I can assure you that once I saw you—’

      ‘Oh, please don’t insult me by pretending that you were bowled over by my heart-stopping beauty!’ Lola snarled. ‘Although I suppose you must have been grateful that I didn’t resemble the back end of a bus! I mean, how would you have coped with bedding me if that had been the case, Geraint, huh? What would you have done then? Insisted that the seduction should go ahead as planned? Just closed your eyes and reminded yourself that revenge was sweet?’

      ‘Don’t be so disgusting!’

      ‘I’ll be anything I damned well like!’ she retorted, hotly.

      ‘Are you suggesting that revenge was the only reason I went to bed with you?’ he queried in a slow, dangerous voice.

      ‘What else am I supposed to think? I should imagine that for a man who is as sexually experienced as you obviously are one extra notch on the bedpost would be neither here nor there, would it? And, of course, you were working on the theory that I would fall hopelessly in love with you. That would, I suppose,’ she added, almost reflectively, ‘make giving me the push so pleasurable. Only I expect that in your wildest dreams you did not expect to hit the jackpot, did you, Geraint?’

      He had gone very still, a faint but unmistakable line of distaste hardening the sensual curves of his mouth. ‘The jackpot?’ he queried. ‘I’m not sure that I understand what you mean, Lola.’

      She suspected that she was going too far, maybe already had gone too far, but she was in too deep now to stop, on a roll, the words too steeped in bitterness to be halted. ‘Me,’ she explained simply. ‘The jackpot.’ And, seeing his still uncompre-hending look, she lanced home her point with the addition of a cruel smile. ‘I mean, if you’re going to try to hurt someone. . . if you’re going to bed them in order to dump them. . . then what better subject to choose than a virgin?’

      He had gone very white, his grey eyes blazing with contemptuous fire as he looked at her in bitter disbelief. ‘As I recall,’ he drawled deliberately, ‘it was me who was just about to leave and you who begged me to stay.’

      How dared he? Lola stared back. How dared he stand there looking as if he was the one who had been wronged and made a complete and utter fool of? ‘Yes, and more fool me!’ she stormed. She looked into his eyes and was suddenly flooded with a violent urge to seek her own form of revenge—and, what was more, she knew the perfect way to go about it! ‘And what if I’m pregnant?’ she asked quietly.

      He threw her a ruthless smile. ‘But we didn’t have unprotected sex, Lola—remember?’

      She willed the blush to stay away but it seemed to take great delight in flooding her cheeks with a hot pink colour.

      Oh, yes, she could remember all right—how Geraint had reached into the back pocket of his jeans for the kind of small foil packet she had only ever seen on sale in chemist shops and ladies’ lavatories. She had shivered slightly as it had brought the reality of what she was about to do crashing home to her, and her feelings at the time had wavered between relief that he was obviously sensible enough to prevent any unwanted pregnancy occurring and disillusionment that he had been so prepared. Did he always carry condoms, she had wondered disappointedly, or had he just been so sure that she would capitulate?

      But then his mouth had come down hungrily to seek out all the erotic places of her body, and Lola had given up caring.

      Until now.

      She glared at him. ‘No, we did not have unprotected sex,’ she agreed cuttingly. ‘But the method we used is not guaranteed to be one hundred per cent effective, is it?’ she ground out. ‘As far as I am aware abstinence is the only technique which can lay claim to that!’

      If she had thought he was white before, she had been exaggerating, because now his face looked absolutely bloodless. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked, in a voice which was so tightly controlled that it sounded as though it might snap at any minute.

      ‘I’m saying that I am right in the middle of my cycle!’ she lied shamelessly. ‘I’m saying that, although it’s a very small chance, I could be pregnant! And what price your petty revenge then, Geraint?’

      There was a pause, and when he spoke again his face had resumed something of its normal colour, though the chilly light which glittered from his eyes made Lola want to slink out of the room in shame.

      ‘We could stand here trading insults all day,’ he told her frostily. ‘But there seems little point. And there’s certainly no point in my staying.’

      He pushed his teacup away and stood up, and he looked so formidably tall and strong and powerful that Lola knew an aching and desolate sense of despair, but somehow she managed to keep it from her face.

      All Geraint would see would be that proud little look of indifference she had plastered all over her features. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘No point at all.’

      ‘Perhaps you’d like to inform me if there are any—’ his mouth tightened ‘—repercussions.’ He must have seen her bewildered expression for he added harshly and angrily, as though the words cost him a huge effort, ‘If you do happen to be pregnant, I will, of course, stand by you in whatever capacity you might wish—’

      But he broke off mid-sentence, as if he was too appalled to continue, and, with a curt yet courteous nod of farewell—like a character from a costume drama—he strode out of the room.

      Lola heard him going downstairs, but she did