memory that were puncturing her brain that was the situation in which she was putting him.
‘Well, as I said, I don’t remember.’ She would hate to admit it to this man who was being so openly hostile, and yet she was on the verge of telling him why, in the hope that he would be able to break down some of the barriers in her brain, when he let out a sound of increasing impatience.
‘You’re still trying to deny we even knew each other?’
He sounded so hard and looked so forbidding that Magenta felt her confidence waning, felt herself shrinking back behind the curtain of self-protection she’d created in order to hide from life until she was ready to grit her teeth and allow herself to take on new challenges—challenges which at the start had seemed insurmountable. But, determined not to let this man’s prejudice undo all the good that the past few years of hard work and perseverance had produced, she swallowed her fears and misgivings and plunged in.
‘What did I do? Stop seeing you because of someone else? Or was it my career? Whatever it was, at least you can go away with the satisfaction of knowing that I probably got my just deserts and didn’t realise all those dreams I was obviously stupid enough to throw you over for.’
His lips held a ruminative smile that did nothing to warm the icy blue of his eyes.
‘Now, there you’re wrong,’ he murmured in a voice that was silkily soft. ‘Our little...interlude wasn’t significant enough for me to harbour any long-term desire for revenge, so there’s no need to beat yourself up over it unnecessarily, Magenta.’ His tone suggested that that was the last thing he expected her to be doing. ‘We’re all guilty at times—especially when we’re young—of setting our sights beyond what we can realistically achieve.’
He’d said he wasn’t harbouring any desire for revenge over whatever she was supposed to have done, but it was obvious to Magenta that he was getting satisfaction from seeing her now.
‘You’d be surprised what I’ve achieved over the past five years or so.’ Her pride forced her to utter the words before she could control the urge.
‘Oh, really?’ A quizzical eyebrow lifted. ‘Like what?’
Like learning to walk again. Like holding a knife and fork! Like taking over responsibility for my own precious little baby. Like staying alive!
Unconsciously she fingered the red and black choker that lay strategically over one of her now fading scars. He didn’t need to know any of that. Or about the Business Studies course she had taken, which had enabled her to apply for the new position she was hoping to get, which would lift her out of temping by day and working behind a bar a couple of nights a week and allow her to provide a better future for her and her son.
‘It isn’t important,’ she dismissed on a defeated little note. Anyway, he was acknowledging lanky young Thomas, who had loped back with his change and was apologising for keeping him waiting.
Magenta’s gaze fell to the lean, masculine hands now lifting the tumblers off the counter. Hands which she knew had once taken her to paradise and back and which were surprisingly devoid of any rings.
But there were two glasses. Two drinks...
His eyes caught her unconcealed interest and he shifted his position slightly—deliberately, Magenta guessed—creating a breach in the crowd and allowing her eyes to make their way to the smartly dressed, very attractive redhead sitting at one of the tables. She was looking at Andreas with a smile born of familiarity and undisguised appreciation.
Looking quickly back at Andreas, Magenta felt his eyes resting too intently on her face. Eyes that were penetratingly perceptive. Much too aware...
‘As I said...’ His mouth twisted with cruel satisfaction. ‘Life’s been good,’ he reiterated, before moving away.
Magenta stood there for a moment, feeling as though she had just come through some invisible, indescribable battle. She felt sick, and her head was thumping, and all she wanted to do was run away and hide. But someone had started giving her an order and she knew she couldn’t just run off without doing her job, even if it was under the smug gaze of a man who clearly despised her.
‘Is that guy a boyfriend of yours?’ Thomas asked over his shoulder as Magenta finished serving the woman.
Over the sounds of a live band setting up their instruments in the designated corner of the wine bar, she could only manage a negative murmur as she shook her head.
‘No?’ A mousy eyebrow disappeared beneath a tangled mass of equally mousy hair. ‘Then why was he looking at you as though he was determined to rip that dress off?’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Dazed though she was, her colleague’s observation pumped up Magenta’s skittering heart-rate, lending a pink tinge to her otherwise colour-leeched face. ‘He’s with someone.’
‘He was.’
‘What?’ She couldn’t see past the wall of customers and the band doing its sound check against a babble of laughter and mixed conversation.
‘I swear he downed that whisky in one and hustled his girlfriend out the door before she had time to draw breath.’
For some reason Magenta’s stomach seemed to turn over. ‘He did?’ Another glimpse towards his table through a sudden gap in the human wall showed only an empty tumbler and a barely touched glass of orange juice that had clearly been hastily abandoned.
‘So? They must have been in a hurry to get somewhere,’ Magenta supplied, wondering why they had left in such a rush. Was it because of her? she speculated, her heart hammering against her ribcage and her head starting to swim. Couldn’t he stand being under the same roof with her long enough for the woman he’d brought with him even to finish her drink?
‘Hey! Are you all right?’ she heard Thomas ask again as she staggered, dropping her head into her hands to try and stanch the rising nausea.
‘No, I’m sorry. Could you call me a taxi?’ she appealed to Thomas, before staggering to the Ladies’ again, where she was violently sick.
* * *
He had behaved badly, Andreas thought as he was driving home alone, but it had been both shocking and unsettling—far more unsettling than he wanted to admit—seeing Magenta again.
He had been twenty-three to her nineteen, and just a dogsbody in his father’s floundering business, and yet he should have known right away what kind of a girl she was. She had been living in a rundown terraced house with her man-crazy alcoholic mother, who hadn’t even known who Magenta’s father was!
He’d taken pity on her, Andreas told himself, as the beam of oncoming headlamps slashed cold light across his hardening features. Why else would he have got himself mixed up with her? But hot on the heels of that self-deluded question came the real answer—one that heated his veins and caused a heavy throbbing in his blood.
Because she’d been warm and exciting and more beautiful than any other girl he had ever met in his life—and he had known quite a few, even then. Although not enough to have learned that girls like Magenta James were only out for one thing. A good time—regardless of the cost to anyone else, particularly the poor sucker who happened to be providing her with that good time!
Tension locked his jaw as he turned
