The Cutting Edge. Linda Howard

least, not for a couple of months anyway. Sophie, I had to tell him. I was ashamed …’

      ‘Ashamed?’ Sophie moved her head from side to side. This couldn’t be happening—not after—not after the way he had kissed her … ‘Oh,. Robert, I’ll never forgive you!’

      ‘I’m not asking for your forgiveness! Hell, I’m just trying to show you the way things really are. I don’t want you to go on imagining that what happened that Christmas—well, that it was anything more than a fleeting impulse——’

      ‘It was!’ she cried.

      Robert shook his head resignedly. ‘No, Sophie.’ He sighed. ‘I thought you were more mature. I was your first—experience, but you certainly weren’t mine! And that’s all it was, Sophie—an experience.’

      ‘Not for me,’ she declared chokingly. ‘Oh, I don’t know how you can say such things after—after what just happened.’

      ‘Oh, God, Sophie! I’m only human. You invited what just happened, you know you did. I’m not proud of it, but how was I to know——’ He broke off and made an impatient gesture. ‘I wanted to comfort you, Sophie—because of the storm. I’ve comforted you before—remember? As I recall it, you once came to my bed in the middle of the night because of a storm. You were about eight years old at the time. You were petrified. I let you stay with me, I put my arms about you—just as I did just now. What happened afterwards was not of my instigation.’

      ‘You’re hateful!’ she exclaimed in a muffled voice, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms round her drawn-up legs. ‘I—I never thought you could be so—so cruel, Robert.’

      Robert raked his hair back again with a vehemence that spoke of his frustration. He glared out at the storm and made a sound of relief that at last the rain was easing and watery rays of sun were casting spears of rainbow colour across the lake that lay below them in the valley. He leant forward and turned the ignition, breathing a sigh of satisfaction as the powerful engine leapt to instant life. Glancing through the rearview mirror, he drove off the grassy verge and on to the rain-soaked road, controlling the skidding of tyres caked with mud.

      ‘You’d better tidy yourself,’ he commented briefly, as they began the descent into the valley. Conwynneth lay in a fold of the hills and already it was possible to see the grey roofs of the cottages that edged the village green. ‘Or do you want to have to explain what’s been happening?’

      Sophie pushed her feet to the floor and fumbled in her pocket for her tie. As she slotted it under the collar of her blouse and fastened it carelessly, her lips were pressed tightly together. She guessed that Robert saw her expression as mutinous. He was not to know that had she not pressed her lips together they would have trembled violently. She felt sick and shaken, and totally unprepared for the confrontation with the family which was to come. All her hopes and fantasies about Robert had been shattered during the last half hour and the last thing she wanted was to have to make any unnecessary explanations. What she really wanted to do was to crawl away somewhere and hide until her wounds had healed a little.