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the sensual dominance he sought.
    But the mere fact of his victory seemed to be enough. Matt lifted his head and put her away from him, his smile slow and contemptuous as he looked down at her.
    'No,' he said softly, 'you're not blessed with any special immunity, darling. Want to argue the point further—in bed, perhaps?'
    'Let go of me!' Her voice cracked on the words.
    He stepped back, raising his hands ostentatiously, his dark face sardonic. 'You're free, Miss Marston. Unless you have anything else you want to discuss with me.'
    She shook her head, staring blindly down at the carpet. 'No—I was a fool to come here—I should have known—should have realised it wouldn't be any use.' Her voice shook. 'You really don't care, do you? You're so used to destroying people, ruining their lives in those programmes of yours, that it doesn't matter to you any more. I—I don't know how you can live with yourself.'
    She went towards the door, and this time he made no attempt to prevent her from leaving. But Kate felt his anger following her like a shadow as she fled down the dim corridor towards the lift and some kind of safety.
     
    She looked like death the following morning, but that was hardly any wonder considering how little she'd slept. And you didn't have to be actually asleep in order to have nightmares, she'd discovered too.
    She decided she must have been suffering from temporary insanity. That was the only feasible explanation she could find for the way she'd acted. Just what had she hoped to achieve? she asked herself in a kind of despair. Some sort of appeal to Matt Lincoln's finer feelings? Some hopes, she thought with bitter irony. He was a tough ruthless man at the top of his profession. He had no need to bother with those kind of refinements, as his behaviour towards herself had clearly shown.
    She groaned inwardly, feeling the hot colour surge in her face as she unwillingly recalled those few moments she had spent—not in his arms, certainly, because he'd never held her like a lover—but under his power.
    She had been seduced, she was forced to acknowledge, and God only knew where it might all have ended if Matt Lincoln had not decided to call a halt.
    It should have been me, she accused herself miserably. I might not have been able to use my hands or move my head, but I could have kicked him, bitten him, given him a swollen lip for the make-up girls to disguise.
    Passive resistance had done no good at all. And at the end, she had been very far from passive, she remembered with shame.
    And she had achieved nothing, except to reveal herself as the worst kind of naive meddler, and to tell herself that she had meant well wasn't the slightest comfort. Didn't they say the road to hell was paved with good intentions?
    The cheerful babble of the coffee peroolater did nothing to raise her spirits, and she switched it off irritably, giving the inoffensive machine a subdued glare.
    From now on, she resolved, she was going to mind her own business, no matter what happened. And her business was her work, and the illustrations that Barlow and Herries were waiting for.
    Her chin set determinedly, she marched across the landing into the studio. It wouldn't be the first time she'd soothed away some inner pain with the anodyne of work, and from what life had taught her already, it wouldn't be the last.
    Normally, she worked fast, with ideas crowding on her as she sketched and discarded, using sheet after sheet of paper as she tried to capture the spirit behind the typed words of the script. But she couldn't pretend she possessed anything like her normal concentration, she thought wearily, as she crumpled yet another sheet and hurled it towards the brimming wastebasket.
    The tap on the studio door was almost a welcome interruption. It would be Maria, Kate thought, flexing her shoulders as she straightened up from her drawing board. She had heard her go out earlier, and guessed she was on her way to the shops, and in particular