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that she did have a job. Her eyes flashed fierce signs of fire, her hands clenching into small fists as she stood up to face him.

      He didn’t look as surprised as she had expected, but then, of course, he was adept at concealing his true feelings; that would have been all part of his barrister’s training.

      ‘You see, despite what you tried to do to me, there are still people around who can recognise the truth when they hear it.’

      An odd expression crossed his face. If she hadn’t known better she might almost have believed that he was amused, and then suddenly he leaned forward, his hand touching her throat, sliding up over her skin to her jaw, cupping it firmly.

      The shock of his unanticipated touch scalded her into immobility, while her pulse jumped frantically beneath her skin and her heart surged heavily against her breastbone. She knew that he was going to kiss her, and yet she refused to believe it. It was unthinkable, impossible, unimaginable, and yet when his mouth touched hers it was as though some part of her had always known that one day there would be a man who would kiss her like this, who would make her pulses race and her blood burn, who would caress her mouth with his own, and in doing so possess her more thoroughly than any other man before or after him.

      Her senses reeled beneath the force of it, her mind a total blank, as he kissed her with slow thoroughness, not rushing or forcing her, his mouth tasting hers with voluptuous delight. His hand still supported her neck, his thumb gently caressing her pulse. His body didn’t touch hers. He made no move to hold her closer or to touch her in any other way, and yet she trembled as much as though he had caressed every single inch of her.

      He released her slowly and deliberately. She came back to earth to hear him saying softly, ‘Delicious.’

      Her eyelids felt weighed down. It was an effort to open them and look at him. He was smiling at her, his mouth curving half mockingly. His eyes looked more silver than grey, liquid like mercury.

      She wanted to reach out and trace the shape of his mouth in wonder and awe, still lost in the mystery of what had happened between them, and then he said in amusement, ‘What’s wrong, Sleeping Beauty? Has no one ever kissed you before?’ And immediately she realised exactly what she was doing and wondered how on earth she would ever be able to forgive herself for being so stupid.

      ‘You had no right to do that,’ she told him painfully, appalled by the folly of her own actions, and yet her heart was still thumping, the effect of his touch still bemusing her senses. She had been kissed before, of course, but never in a way that had affected her so strongly.

      ‘No right at all,’ he agreed affably, cutting across her thoughts. ‘But that didn’t stop both of us enjoying it.’

      Enjoying it? Lark almost choked on her chagrin, but what could she say? She had enjoyed it, more than enjoyed it, she admitted, shivering as she remembered how she had abandoned herself to the sensation of his mouth moving against her own.

      It was because it had been such a shock, she told herself defensively. For him to kiss her had been so out of character, the very last thing she had anticipated.

      ‘I want you to leave,’ she told him stiffly, standing up and walking over towards the door. Her whole body felt as though she had been subjected to a terrible fever, her joints actually feeling as though they ached. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

      To her relief he made no demur, but it wasn’t until he had actually gone and she had locked the door behind him that she realised that she had never really discovered exactly why he had come in the first place. What if he should come back? Panic hit her. She didn’t want to see him again. She couldn’t. She couldn’t even think about why she was so terrified at the prospect.

      There was only one way she could escape. She would have to take Mrs Mayers’ job. Even if he traced her there, she wouldn’t be so alone, so vulnerable. He would never kiss her like that while she was living with Mrs Mayers. He would never dare to arrive on Mrs Mayers’ doorstep and demand entrance.

      Had his kiss been his personal way of extracting payment because the case had been cancelled? She shivered, hugging her arms tightly around herself.

      He was certainly arrogant enough to do something so unorthodox, but there hadn’t been anger in his touch, nor resentment. So why, then? She shivered again, knowing the answer but not wanting to admit it. There had been that brief moment of time in the court room, that exchanging and mingling of glances that had contained more than mere acknowledgement of one another as adversaries.

      Too inexperienced to judge its value properly, she had nevertheless been aware of that brief arcing of some indefinable emotion between them, some sensation of almost physical communion, generated by their mutual awareness. But she had dismissed it, not wanting to recognise its potential.

      She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself for instinctive comfort. She would have to take the job now. She wasn’t going to allow herself to dwell on exactly why she felt this need to protect herself, and if Mrs Mayers’ son disapproved, well, that was his problem, she told herself defiantly.

      CHAPTER THREE

      WHY on earth was she spending so much time agonising about taking the job which, in her heart of hearts, she was forced to admit might have been tailor-made to get her out of her present dilemma?

      The reason was quite simple. She liked Mrs Mayers. The older woman had stressed right from the start that she knew all about the court case and that she didn’t want to discuss it.

      Lark had taken her words at face value, only too glad to meet someone at last who was prepared to judge her on herself and not on what she had read in the papers about her. But would the same hold true for Mrs Mayers’ son? Somehow, she doubted it very much, and there was the crux of her dilemma.

      With every word she had said to Lark about her son, Mrs Mayers had betrayed her love of him, and mixed with that love had been just the tiniest tinge of awe, Lark was sure of it.

      She wouldn’t go as far as saying that Mrs Mayers was in fear of her son. Lark would hate to be the cause of any trouble between them, and yet, if she didn’t accept Mrs Mayers’ offer, what on earth was she going to do? And that was before she had even begun to try and analyse exactly why James Wolfe had come round to see her.

      She told herself that she had hated the way he had brazenly demanded entrance to her flat, the way he had so calmly and arrogantly assumed that she would welcome his attentions. Attentions! She laughed bitterly and wryly to herself.

      What a very old-fashioned word for what was in effect a very modern sin. She had no doubt at all about what James Wolfe had wanted from her. She remembered with sick distaste several newspaper men who had haunted her doorstep until they realised that there was simply no way she was going to respond to their advances.

      They had been at first amused and then annoyed to discover that she was not in the least flattered by their propositions. She had been astounded to discover that they seemed to take it for granted that she would be only too happy to go to bed with them. Common sense had warned her that they would laugh in her face if she had told them she was simply not that kind of girl, which happened to be the truth.

      She was twelve years old when her aunt took her on one side and gave her a lecture about the ways that good girls did and did not behave. Her aunt had left her in no doubts whatsoever as to what her fate would be if she ever dared to stray from the straight and narrow path she had just outlined to her.

      As a teenager, Lark had struggled with her own inner rebellion when she’d discovered her cousin was not expected to adhere to the same rigid moral code. Now she considered it was too late for her to indulge in the kind of teenage experimentation she had then been denied.

      At university, she had been too busy to have much time to spend with friends of the opposite sex. In her first month at work, she found that she had discovered a certain fastidiousness that put her out of step with many of her peers. Perhaps that was why the thought of working for Mrs Mayers was so tempting. It would be a totally non-threatening environment—something

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