you doing now?”
He spared her a glance. “I run a telecommunications business, providing systems for industry.”
“Is it a big business?”
“Big enough.” He shrugged. “We’re expanding all the time, increasing staff numbers.”
“It sounds…interesting.”
“It’s challenging. New technologies are being invented and refined all the time. We have to stay a jump ahead, deciding which innovations are a flash in the pan and which will become industry standards.”
“It sounds risky?”
“I’ve built a solid enough base that we can afford the odd risk. So far I haven’t been wrong.”
“You must be proud of yourself.”
He seemed to ponder that. “Pride is what goes before a fall, isn’t it?”
“Are you afraid of falling?”
He laughed, with that new, somehow disturbing male confidence. “Not anymore. Are you?”
She looked away from him, not answering.
He gave her a second or two, then said quite soberly, “I learned a long time ago, no matter how hard the fall, I can survive. And I never make the same mistake twice.”
“It seems like a sound philosophy.” She’d survived too. And she had no intention of scaling any heights again with him.
He said, “I heard you got married in America.”
“Yes.”
“Did your parents approve?”
“Yes, actually.” They had come to the wedding, given their blessing.
“But you’re alone now.”
She didn’t want his sympathy. Even less did she want to bare her feelings to him, of all people. To take the conversation away from herself she asked, “Are you married?”
The first question that had come to mind, but immediately she regretted asking. It could lead to a minefield.
“Like I said,” he replied, “I never make the same mistake twice.”
“Marriage isn’t always a mistake,” she said.
It left him an opening, she realized, and was thankful that he didn’t take it. He gunned the motor and the car leaped forward before he lifted his foot slightly and the engine settled back into its subdued growl. When he spoke again his voice was remote and cool. “I suppose you can’t wait to get back to…America.”
Evasively she answered, “I’ll be spending some time with my family.”
“How much time…days, weeks?” He paused. “Months?”
“I’m not sure.”
He flashed a glance at her. “He must be pretty accommodating…your husband.”
Her thoughts skittering, she realized Jager didn’t know…
Why should he? Her mouth dried, and her throat ached. She stared through the windscreen with wide-open eyes until they stung and she had to blink. “My husband—”
She didn’t see the other car until it was right in front of them—it seemed to have come from nowhere, the headlights blinding, so close that her voice broke off in a choked scream and she raised her arms before her face, knowing that despite Jager’s frantic wrench at the wheel, accompanied by a sharp, shocking expletive, there was no way he could avoid a collision.
A horrified sense of inevitability mixed with cold, stark terror, and the awareness that maybe this was how—and when—she was going to die.
With Jager, said a clear inner voice, and the thought carried with it both tearing grief and a strange, fleeting sensation of gladness.
The heavy thump and screech of metal on metal filled her ears and the impact jolted her against the seat belt. She was vaguely aware of the windscreen, glimpsed between her shielding arms, going white and opaque, then it disappeared and the two cars, locked together, slid across the road in a slow, agonizing waltz until they came to a jarring halt against a building.
Daring to lower her arms, Paige heard Jager’s voice, seemingly somewhere in the far distance. “Paige—Paige! Are you all right?”
His hand gripped her shoulder, and by the light of a street lamp she saw his face, a deathly color, with dark thin trickles of moisture running from his forehead, his cheeks and his eyes blazing.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, raising an unsteady hand to touch one of the small rivulets, wanting suddenly to cry. She couldn’t bear the thought of him being disfigured.
“Never mind that,” he said impatiently. “Are you hurt?” His hands slid from her shoulders down her arms, and he swore vehemently. “You’re bleeding too.”
She was, from several tiny glass nicks on her bare forearms. “It’s nothing.” She moved her legs, found them whole and unhurt. “I’m all right. Are you?”
“Nothing broken.”
In the background someone was yelling. Car doors slammed and then a face peered into the space left by the broken windscreen. “The police and ambulance are on their way,” said a male voice. “Anyone hurt in there?”
“We’re okay,” Jager answered. “Can you get the passenger door open? My side’s too badly damaged.”
Ambulance staff checked them both and told them they were lucky, but to contact an emergency medical service if they experienced delayed symptoms.
The other driver, miraculously walking, though groggy and with a broken arm, was taken to hospital. While the police were noncommittal when they breath-tested Jager and took statements from both him and Paige, it was fairly obvious the injured man had been drinking.
Within half an hour the cars had been dragged away and the police offered to take Paige and Jager home.
Jager gave them Paige’s parents’ address and climbed into the car beside her. He handed her purse to her and she realized he’d retrieved it from the wreckage.
When the car drew up outside the house he got out and helped her to the pavement, and said to the driver, “Thanks a lot. We appreciate the lift.”
He had his arm around her and was urging her to the gateway as the police car pulled away from the kerb.
“Don’t you want them to take you home?” she said. “You don’t need to come in with me.”
“It doesn’t look like your parents are in yet. I’m not leaving you alone.”
The garden lights were on—they were on an automatic timer—but the house was in darkness.
When
