style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Who did you think it would be?’ he mocked. ‘Was the floor show for dear Henry? Hoping to inspire a little passion in him, were you, Scarlett? Let’s hope for your sake that he makes love more accurately than he kisses.’
‘Why, you—!’ Her hand went up automatically.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ his cold voice rang out. ‘I’m driving, remember?’
‘You couldn’t stop me if I wanted to!’ she taunted.
‘Couldn’t I?’ he said quietly. ‘I could stop this car right now and quieten you down very effectively, Scarlett—and I’m sure you don’t need to ask me how.’
Her hand fell to her lap, her cheeks flushed pink in the darkness. This was madness! Sheer madness. Liam was kidnapping her, for God’s sake, and she was just sitting back in her seat like a lemon and letting him!
‘You just can’t do this to me!’ she protested.
‘I just did.’
‘Haven’t you got any consideration for other people? My stepfather will be worried sick about me.’
‘He’ll survive,’ he said coldly.
‘He’ll call the police,’ she said, equally coldly.
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘And you’ll be arrested. Slung into jail.’ She heard her voice rising sharply. ‘Though it probably won’t be the first time, will it, Liam?’
She saw the merest glimmer of amusement hover around a mouth that was far too delectable for its own good. ‘You think I’ve done time?’ he queried, almost casually.
‘Nothing would surprise me about you!’ she said, with feeling.
‘Well, that’s good, Scarlett,’ he drawled. ‘Never underestimate your opponent—that’s the first ground rule for battle.’
She felt sadness mixed with fury. They were battling now; they had battled then. Their whole brief relationship had been a war, punctuated with wild flurries of peace in the form of their ecstatic lovemaking. She hunted around for the coup de grâce to wound him. ‘Well, I’d like to know where you got the money to pay for this fancy car,’ she said insultingly.
She saw his knuckles tighten for an instant on the steering wheel, but there was nothing but sardonic amusement in his voice as he spoke. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Scarlett, but your patronising Lady Bountiful act fails to impress me.’
‘It used to, though,’ she said bitterly. ‘I thought that my classy accent turned you on. I thought you liked hob-nobbing with the gentry—almost as much as I liked slumming it with you.’
The lie sounded convincing—even to her. Let him believe that her passion for him had been the youthful experimentation of a naïve young girl, which had quickly faded. Never let him know that he had been the love of her life, the man with whom she had constantly found herself comparing other men. And hadn’t the other men always come up lacking? Wasn’t that why she’d agreed to an eminently ‘suitable’ marriage to Henry—because she’d given up looking for love?
‘Slumming, huh?’ The deep voice was clinical, detached... The old Liam would have exploded with anger at the jibe, stopped whatever he was doing and taken her into his arms with a ruthless passion which would have had her denying anything he’d wanted her to deny.
But this Liam—this stranger in the suit—he merely reached out and pushed a cassette into the tape deck, and music filled the car.
Scarlett could have screamed as the violently passionate strains of the love-scene from Carmen pierced the air with frighteningly sweet sensuality. But short of actually putting her fingers in her ears, there wasn’t a lot she could do to blot the sound out. Instead, she stared fixedly ahead at the empty road. When had he learnt to like opera? she wondered with a sudden bitterness.
She realised with a sudden shock that she had never seen him drive before either. During their lamentably brief and ill-fated marriage they had been desperately short of money—and Liam had stubbornly refused to accept any hand-outs from her stepfather. Which was why they’d lived in the small, dingy flat over the café, where the smell of cabbage had drifted upwards and seemed to permeate even their clothes and their skin. And where Scarlett would play at being a housewife while Liam went out to his labouring job each morning.
She had to think clearly. Liam was back, but there was a limit to how far even he would go. What was he planning? And why, for goodness’ sake, was she just accepting this dramatic seizure, as though it was inevitable? As though, with him around, she had no conscious will of her own?
Drawing her shoulders back, she sat up straight in her seat and forced herself to take note of landmarks as the snow-clothed countryside flashed by. Her heart started hammering as she recognised the village as they drove quietly through it and circumnavigated the iced-over village pond.
The road out of it was narrow, winding. She closed her eyes quickly, not daring to open them again, although she knew exactly what she would see if she did. To her left she would see a dramatic line of horse-chestnuts, like scarecrows of the gods, waving their bare black arms against the heavy, snow-laden sky.
How could he have done? she wondered with helpless bitterness. To have brought her here...
‘Afraid to look, Scarlett?’ mocked the deep voice beside her, and she fluttered open her eyelids in defiance, still not believing it to be true. Her heart was sinking, yet at the same time it started to hammer with some shameful excitement as the car drew up in front of the small cottage.
As he turned the engine off she released her seatbelt and turned on him, her long nails instinctively forming cat-like talons which attempted to scrabble at his face. But he fended them off as a tiger would swat a butterfly, his big, strong hands closing decisively over hers.
There was a cold, cruel smile on his face as he watched her lips part automatically as their skin made contact. ‘Fight me all you like, Scarlett—but why don’t we get horizontal first?’ he said insultingly. But before she could retaliate he had unbuckled his seatbelt, stepped out of the car, had walked around to her side and was doing the same for her.
‘Take me home at once!’ she said flatly. ‘If you do that, and leave me alone, I’ll let the whole matter drop.’
‘Not even a little bit curious, Scarlett, to know what your dear husband has been doing for all these years?’
‘Not in the least.’ Her eyes deliberately swept down every inch of the superbly cut and outrageously expensive suit. ‘Something underhand, I shouldn’t doubt—judging from the money you’re obviously throwing around.’
‘You think so?’ he asked softly.
Hurt him, urged an inner voice. Hurt him badly, as he hurt you. She gave him a supercilious little smile. ‘How did you make your money, then, Liam?’ she said patronisingly. ‘Labouring?’
‘But I thought you liked all that kind of thing, sweetheart?’ he drawled. ‘Your bit of rough,’ he added with insulting emphasis.
She felt all the blood
