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boarding school this year. She’s not settling very well. She misses—well, she misses me and the life she’s known up until now.”
    And her mother, Alida added for him. A girl would always miss her mother. Especially at thirteen when her life was changing in so many ways. Alida well remembered her own problems when she had been sent away to school. Gareth’s daughter would undoubtedly have a lot of adjusting to do.
    Would she ever accept another woman in her mother’s place? But that was leaping too far ahead, Alida reminded herself. First things first. If Gareth was only after satisfaction with her, there was little point in worrying over a future.
    Unless he could come to love her.
    Yes, that was what she really wanted, Alida acknowledged. For Gareth to return the love he had left stillborn in her five years ago. Despite the way he had treated her then, he could still stir the same feelings that yearned for fulfilment.
    Could she live with less, she wondered? Was she willing to compromise if it meant Andy would have his father? If it meant she could have Gareth as a constant in her life, even if it was only a part-time constant? Was there any real chance of having something good with him that would not cost her her self-respect?
    Alida slowly regained her composure. She turned to look at the man who could mean so much to her and her son. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, but not seeing it. Alida’s heart sank. By speaking of his daughter, she had obviously reminded him of his wife again.
    She saw his mouth compress into a thin line. Then his hand tightened around hers and he swung his head towards her, blue eyes glittering. When he found her looking at him, his expression softened.
    “Tell me what you’ve been doing over the past five years,” he invited.
    “Working.” Her smile mocked any further pursuit of that topic. “I don’t want to bore you, Gareth.”
    He glanced at the statuette on the seat between them. “You obviously worked to good effect. I don’t imagine that such an award comes easily.”
    “It was a goal to aim for.”
    “And you reached it.” He lifted his gaze and searched her eyes, curious to see what she felt about it.
    “Yes.”
    “Have you now achieved your life’s ambition?”
    “No. I have other goals.” He could misinterpret that statement as much as he liked. She was not going to elaborate to him on the way her mind was working.
    His mouth curled into a sardonic smile. “To reach the top of any field, you have to dedicate your life to it, Alida. Is there room for anything else apart from your ambition?”
    “I’m making room for you, Gareth,” she answered bluntly.
    “Tonight you are.”
    “Yes. For tonight.” To see if it was a beginning or a dead end, she thought.
    His fingers dragged back and forth over hers, transmitting the tension that held them both captive to the unanswered questions that throbbed between them.
    “How old are you?” he asked quietly.
    “Thirty.”
    “You haven’t wanted to marry?”
    She knew he had her pigeonholed as a woman whose career came first and foremost. “It hasn’t happened.”
    “Does your career get in the way?”
    “No.”
    He frowned. “Then why?”
    “I loved a man once. It takes two people to marry, Gareth.”
    “Who was he?”
    “No one I could introduce you to,” she said evasively.
    “I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically, totally unaware that she had been speaking of him.
    “Are you?” Alida tossed at him. “We wouldn’t be in this taxi if I was committed to someone else, Gareth.”
    His mouth twisted. “You mean you wouldn’t do what I did?”
    “Precisely.”
    “It wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting you, Alida.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t really care about desire.”
    There was a raw yearning in his eyes that choked the breath in her throat. His marriage hadn’t stopped him from taking what he wanted last time. Would her hypothetical marriage have held him back from approaching her