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  Damian inclined his dark head. ‘Then I’ll give it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she all but whispered. She was suddenly tired, so very tired. She could almost have burst into tears with sheer emotion.

  Damian had taken out a crocodile-skin notepad, and was writing in it with a heavy gold pen. She watched the slick nib move across the paper. ‘I’ll get in touch with Braithwaite and Denison this afternoon, if you’ll give me their numbers. I have a feeling that’s where I should begin. I’ll also want to talk to whoever is your company lawyer, and, if possible, the accountant.’

  ‘You’ll be discreet?’ she begged.

  ‘No, I’ll go in like the commandos,’ he said ironically. ‘First I’ll kick the door down, then I’ll spray them with machine-gun fire. What do you think I am, Kirby?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She pulled open her bag, and took out her own diary to give him the basic information he wanted.

  ‘We won’t discuss this any further right now,’ he decided.

  ‘You look exhausted. I’ll call and see you at the Lodge this evening. OK?’

  Kirby nodded, and pushed her bowl away, leaving the fruit salad, too, almost untasted. Damian met her eyes.

  ‘You’ve had a tough time of it, haven’t you?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I’m not as frail as I look,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Damian observed with a dry look on his tanned face. ‘I learned that, Kirby. Long ago.’ He drained the rest of his brandy, and smiled at her. ‘You talk about Braythorpe with quite a proprietorial air,’ he said lazily. ‘Is the town really that important to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a flash of anger. ‘I haven’t sold my soul for a fat London bank account, Damian. Not yet. This town meant something to Keith. And to me. I was born here. So were Mum and Dad, and their parents before them.’

  ‘And so was I,’ Damian said mildly.

  ‘You wouldn’t think so,’ she snapped. ‘Nothing here seems to matter a damn to you, darling Damian. Does anything matter to you in London?’

  He didn’t answer, just kept watching her with those dark, brilliant eyes. Kirby rubbed her temples, her anger fading. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I shouldn’t have snapped.’

  ‘I wanted to see whether you would snap,’ Damian said with a slight smile. ‘At least I know where you stand.’

  ‘I’m not a businesswoman, Damian. Unlike you, I can’t reconcile myself to exploiting human misery.’

  His eyes darkened angrily. ‘Is that what I do?’

  ‘It’s what you did to those Third World fishermen! It’s what you did to the family of that boy who was killed in that plane crash!’

  He seemed to be making an effort to bite back a reply. ‘I told you, I don’t discuss my business affairs,’ he said at last. ‘But let me put it hypothetically. Accidents happen. People get hurt at work. That’s human nature. Big companies often get the blame, even when negligence can be proven against the victims. We don’t like to see people suffer. We try to payout what we’re liable for. But it doesn’t always work that way.’

  ‘No?’ she asked aloofly.

  ‘No.’ Damian held her gaze. ‘Sometimes some hotshot lawyer rushes round to see the family in his Ferrari, and starts convincing them that he can make their fortunes by suing the company on their behalf. It doesn’t matter whether the company was at fault or not. They have all the money, don’t they? Long before a compensation figure has even been calculated, he’s already started talking in terms of millions.’ His fingers were drumming a devil’s tattoo on the table, an old sign of impatience. ‘In the meantime experts start working out a realistic figure. When it’s announced, it’s way below the figure the hotshot lawyer has come to. The hotshot lawyer advises the families, now his clients, to reject the offer. He holds a Press conference to create a blaze of publicity, which ends up focused on him. Then, with the sword of justice in his good right hand, he leads a crusade against the company.’

  ‘Please. Spare me the cynicism.’

  Damian smiled without humour. ‘Right. The company has to defend the case. It’s no longer a question of the company and the families any more. Now it’s their lawyers against our lawyers. The case drags on for months. All this time, the victims’ families still haven’t received any compensation. Legal fees mount up to immense figures on both sides. When a settlement is finally reached, after agonising and embittering delays, the hotshot lawyer scoops a massive dollop off the top. The families end up with less than they’d have got if they hadn’t contested, all those months ago. The hotshot lawyer, after making a pious’statement to the Press, drives back to his penthouse in his Ferrari, with a large cheque in his pocket. And the families wonder what it was all about, anyway.’ Damian leaned forward grimly. ‘Now you tell me. Which one of us is profiting off human misery? The company or the hotshot lawyer? Which of us has perverted the course of justice?’

  ‘You’re talking about a hypothetical case,’ Kirby replied, not wanting to show how much his rhetoric had swayed her. ‘Are you saying that’s what happened with the plane crash?’

  ‘I’m saying that I don’t specialise in defrauding widows and orphans, Kirby. The tabloid Press are not qualified as moral commentators. If you want the truth, check the court records yourself.’

  He was really angry, Kirby realised. Her knife had somehow slid through a chink in that massive armour of his, and had touched a vital spot. Knowing that she had hurt him gave her an odd feeling, part-triumph, part-pain.

  ‘Well,’ she said with well-feigned lightness, reaching for her bag, ‘I’m not too proud to call on your services. So why should I worry about muddying my skirts? I’d like to pay for this meal, Damian.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said calmly. ‘I invited you.’

  She checked her watch artlessly. ‘Is that the time? I’m so sorry, I have to run. I have an appointment at three.’

  He rose, his eyes glinting, but kept his urbane mask in place. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Good.’ She was backing away, keeping herself out of reach of any possible goodbye kisses. ‘I look forward to that. Thank you for helping, Damian. I appreciate it.’

  She gave him a bright smile, and turned to leave.

  She felt his dark eyes boring into her back all the way out of the restaurant.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KIRBY got home at five, and changed out of her lavender tweed into her more usual home attire—denim jeans and a cotton shirt, with a fluffy white angora sweater to keep her warm. It was more ‘her’ than the elegant, formal clothes she was forced to wear as head of Waterford Electronics, and Keith Waterford’s widow.

  Damian hadn’t said what time he would call, and she distracted herself by pottering around the house, doing all the household tasks she’d been putting off.

  The Lodge was so big without Keith. Its emptiness echoed around her mournfully, the stately rooms filled with an air of melancholy which was emphasised by the covers she’d had put on the furniture in the rooms that were no longer used.

  She would have sold the Lodge, as she was currently selling the Jaguar, if she’d been able to do so. But the house was tied up with the assets of Waterford Electronics. Nor was there any way she could have dismissed Mrs Carstairs, who’d been housekeeper here for years. In fact, she welcomed Mrs Carstairs’s company in the big house; they were not intimate, but they had become friends.

  When darkness fell, and an evening mist started to form round the house, Mrs Carstairs had the maid prepare a fire in the drawingroom. Feeling wearied, Kirby made herself a mug of coffee, and sat beside the fire, staring with unseeing eyes at the flames that flickered around the logs.

  Damian would be here soon. Despite the fire, and the downy luxury of her angora jersey, she felt a cold chill touch her skin.

  Her thoughts had gone back six years in time, to that fateful night of her eighteenth birthday.

  She’d been so young, then. So young, and so vulnerable.

  Eighteen had been the gateway to
adulthood so they told her―but she’d felt so very helpless.At least Damian hadn’t done what Kirby had dreaded he might do, which was bring another girl to her party, dance with her, flirt with her, and take her home, leaving Kirby in floods of tears. In fact, it had been a pleasant enough, ordinary party. Ordinary, that was, until the end.

  Because after the party; lovesick and hopelessly infatuated with Damian, she’d thought a miracle had happened.

  Everyone had gone home, or gone to bed, except the two of them. She had found herself alone with Damian, in the dark garden, on the cold, crystal-clear December night of her eighteenth year.

  She’d wanted to thank him for his kindness, and she’d started saying so; but somehow tears had got in the way, choking her words and bringing her to a halt.

  And then she’d been in Damian’s arms, hearing the half-stifled groan, deep in his chest, as his lips had sought hers. It had been a kiss like nothing else she’d ever experienced, or was to experience again. His mouth had seemed to sear hers, his arms crushing her with such formidable strength that she was dizzy.

  She’d heard him whisper the words she thought she would never hear from him.

  ‘Kirby … my darling … I want you so much.’

  A miracle. Kirby’s soul had soared, leaving her body, reaching heights of bliss that she’d never dreamed of. It was as though all the months of pain and tension had been swept away. All her misery was over. He loved her.

  He felt exactly the way she did; she could tell that by the way his strong arms trembled, by the way his voice caught in his throat as he whispered her name.

  As she strained against him, their tongues meeting in the flickering excitement of their first real kiss, she’d had the wild thought that the past months of misery had been some kind of test, some kind of ordeal that he’d put her through to find out whether her feelings would survive.

  They’d slipped into the summer-house at the bottom of the garden, which offered shelter from the December cold, and he’d taken her in his arms again. His hunger had been almost pagan, his mouth devouring her lips, her throat, the upraised oval of her face. His arousal had been hot and thrusting against her. She felt his hands caress her taut breasts, brushing the aching peaks of her nipples in a release that had made her gasp huskily with pleasure.

  They knew each other so well, bodies and minds; they had seen one another grow from adolescence into maturity.

  But it had never been like this before. This was a fulfilment of the promise that had built up over all those years, like the vast weight of water behind a dam, waiting for the floodgates to open and release that long pent-up pressure.

  Kirby moved away from the window, and walked back across the room, feeling her face flushing hotly with the six-year-old memories. Even now, at this great distance of time and experience, her pulses were racing at the recollection of what she’d felt that night. Pleasures and pains that nothing, nothing at all, had ever come close to since then.

  That night in the summer-house had ended in near hysteria for Kirby. The ecstasy of their embrace had been ruptured savagely, without warning. She’d felt the reaction rip through Damian’s big body, muscles bunching as he’d tensed, then had thrust her harshly away from him.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he’d snarled in a voice like a stranger’s, ‘what are you doing to me?’

  She’d covered her aroused, tingling breasts, and had stared him numbly in the darkness. ‘Damian, 1love you,’ she’d whispered in bewilderment.

  ‘Love?’ he’d ground out. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I do,’ she’d pleaded, trying to take him in her arms again, ‘I do! We’re meant for each other; you know that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he’d asked dangerously.

  ‘About you and me. I always thought you knew how I felt. That I want to be your wife. That we’d―we’d get married one day—’

  ‘Married?’ That was when he’d really erupted. He’d thrust her away with such violence that she’d staggered, gasping with the pain that had been neither physical nor mental, but something crueller, more frightening. Kirby had quailed, terrified and uncomprehending under the savage words that followed.

  ‘I’ve known you since you were a child, but I never realised you were such a fool.’

  ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she’d whispered, appalled.

  ‘Haven’t you got the message by now? I don’t want you around me any more. I’ve outgrown you! I’ve been trying to tell you that for months, and you’re just too damned bone-headed to understand.’

  ‘Damian!’

  ‘Did you think otherwise?’ he’d challenged fiercely, a dark silhouette against the window.

  ‘I thought you cared!’

  ‘What gave you that impression?’ he’d asked contemptuously.

  ‘You―you’ve always cared! Why did you give me that job in your firm, if you didn’t want me near you?’

  ‘Just to help out. As a stepping-stoneso that you could move on to something more permanent. 1didn’t expect that you’d outstay your welcome so long, mooning over me like a lovesick girl.’

  She’d buried her face in her hands, sobbing at the cruelty, the unjustness of it. He’d been pitiless as he went on.

  ‘As for marriage, you can get that idea out of your head right away. For one thing, I have no room in my life for a wife, and, for another, 1wouldn’t choose you, anyway.’ His voice had grown quieter, but not any more gentle. ‘You might as well know, here and now, that I’m leaving Braythorpe.’

  That had shocked her out of her tears. ‘Leaving?’ she’d gasped.

  ‘I’m going to London. Soon. That’s where my career lies, and I don’t think I’ll ever be coming back.’

  He’d stepped forward, and had grasped her shoulders, fingers biting into her flesh. ‘Listen to me, Kirby. There’s nothing between us. We were good friends; we could still have been good friends. But you chose to confuse friendship with love, and that has spoiled everything. The best advice 1can give you now is to forget all about me, and forget all about love, until you meet someone who’s prepared to return your feelings.’

  He’d turned and walked out, leaving her in hysterical tears, beyond hope.

  There was a tap at the door, mercifully interrupting her thoughts.

  Kirby dragged herself out of the dark well of her memories, and turned to face Mrs Carstairs. ‘Yes, Mrs Carstairs?’

  ‘I’m just knocking off, Mrs Waterford. There’s a cottage pie in the fridge. Is there anything else before I leave?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said automatically. ‘You’re very kind to me, Mrs Carstairs. See you tomorrow.’

  She leaned back in the leather chair, one hand against her aching heart. Remembering that dreadful night had brought it all back. The near-breakdown that had followed, the black, empty winter that had enveloped her.

  God, what an empty, bottomless abyss she’d fallen into.

  She’d left work, of course. And Damian, as he’d promised, had gone to London, his career soaring above the mundane heights of other men. Her loneliness and grief had been intense, endless.

  It had been Keith who had rescued her, in the summer of the following year. Gentle, kind Keith who had cared for her so much, who hadn’t minded that her heart was somewhere else. He had loved her for what she was, not for what she could give him, or do for him. Older than her, older even than Damian, he had already been a wealthy man, his computer electronics company enjoying a big, solid success. He had drawn her out of the shadows, and had given her a new life at his side.

  Damian had noticed how she had changed in five years of marriage, but she wondered whether he really understood how much she’d changed. Of the impulsive, emotional adolescent she’d once been, almost nothing was left. The cool, poised woman who was now called Mrs Kirby Waterford was light years away from the weeping, bewildered eighteen-year-old called Kirby Bryant who had been so tragically infatuated with a man who could never, ever love her
.

  She heard the deep note of a car’s engine approaching the house up the drive. She knew it was Damian, and desperately tried to shake away the mood her painful memories had brought. She needed to have all her defences at the ready in order to face Damian right now.

  She waited until she heard the front doorbell chime.

  Then she rose, took a deep breath, and went to let him in.

  Damian was wearing a rough sheepskin jacket, the perfect attire for his rugged frame. The fleecy collar made a frame for the splendidly handsome face that smiled down at her.

  ‘Nice little shack you have here,’ he commented as he came in. ‘You must get a good view of Braythorpe when the Yorkshire mist lifts.’