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loathing him, she felt her lips quiver. 'Aren't you the flatterer!'
    'Not usually,' he said. He drank his coffee, and set the cup down on a table near his seat with a deliberation that she found slightly unnerving. He looked at her, and she thought confusedly that the lamplight had softened the colour of his eyes to silver. He held out his hand, and his voice was very gentle suddenly. 'Come here.'
    And the shattering thing was that it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have got out of that chair and gone to him. It was unbelievable that she could feel that way, but she did. He was her enemy, and she hated him. He had insulted her and outraged all her feelings ever since he had walked into her life, and yet she remembered the way his mouth had scorched her hand, and knew that, in his arms, her whole body could turn to living flame.
    And remembered too, just in time, that he thought she was the worst kind of tramp.
    She said huskily, 'I'll see you in hell first.'
    'Heaven might be more enjoyable,' he suggested, but she could hear the cynical note. He thought she was just playing hard to get, and that sooner rather than later she would let him make love to her.
    She rose to her feet with a faint smile. 'Heaven?' she queried. 'Now you're flattering yourself, Mr Allard. I'll leave you to your fantasies, and go to bed. Alone.'
    'What a waste,' he said softly. 'You wouldn't be disappointed, I'm sure my performance would reach the standard you've come to expect.'
    'A personal guarantee,' she marvelled. 'Now there's a novelty! But I'm still not tempted. Goodnight.'
    'One thing I would guarantee.' His voice was silky. 'That—come the dawn—at least you'd remember my bloody name. There's another novelty.'
    Lisle walked to the door, nerves jumping at every step, in case he came after her. Because in spite of everything that had happened, she wasn't sure how she would react if he touched her, seriously wanted her. She hoped she would kick and bite and scratch to be free, behave like the vixen he'd called her, but she wasn't issuing any guarantees at all, and she knew she wouldn't feel safe until she was safely up in her room behind a door which, for the first time in her life, she would lock.

CHAPTER THREE

     
    Lisle woke with a start in the pitch dark, remembering she had forgotten to telephone Gerard. Well, not forgotten, simply had no opportunity to do so without Jake guessing what she was up to. And she didn't want him to know. She wanted to be able to speak to Gerard in perfect privacy without Jake being able to overhear so much as a word.
    Not for the first time, she sighed over Murray's intransigence on the subject of phone extensions in bedrooms. He thought they were immoral, a blatant temptation to people to be idle and run up enormous bills at the same time.
    'A telephone's place is in the library,' he said. 'Let people make their calls at a civilised hour or not at all.'
    The middle of the night was hardly a civilised time, Lisle thought ruefully, but it was all that was available.
    She had fallen asleep at once, behind that safely locked door, so she hadn't heard Jake pass her room on his way to bed, but he would be sound asleep by now.
    She sighed as she pushed back the covers and reached reluctantly for her robe: The first thing she would have to do was go to Gerard's own room, find his address book, and hope that Carla Foxton's Barbados villa was in it. If that address book ever fell into the wrong hands, it would probably be grounds for a dozen divorces, she thought as she padded softly across the carpet to the door. She stood for a moment on the landing, listening intently, but the house was at peace, not a light showing anywhere.
    She found the address book in Gerard's bureau, and slid it into the pocket of her robe, before beginning the journey downstairs.
    The drawing room door was open when she reached the hall, and she could see the remaining embers of the logs still glowing red in the wide hearth.