LITMIR.BIZ

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Helen cut in shrilly. ‘No, I didn’t tell him anything. Why should I? He means nothing to me.’

      ‘But he’d like to. He more or less demanded that I introduce the two of you.’

      ’Well, I wish you’d said no.’

      ‘Stay there,’ Jenny ordered as she began to move. ‘I’ll get a cloth and clean your face up.’

      Helen grimaced. ‘I wasn’t going anywhere, just getting comfortable.’

      Jenny was back within seconds, gently sponging the blood off Helen’s face. ‘He was a bit rough with you,’ she murmured thoughtfully.

      Helen winced as she touched a tender spot. ‘Rough!’ she repeated disgustedly. ‘He was like an animal!’

      ‘Oh, surely not. He—–’

      ‘He was like an animal,’ she insisted. ‘I suppose he thinks that because he’s who he is I should have felt honoured by his attention to me. He had the nerve to think I was attracted to him.’

      ‘And you weren’t?’

      Helen touched the soreness of her mouth. ‘Doesn’t this tell you the answer to that?’ she grimaced.

      Jenny shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’ She walked over to pick up the telephone and began dialling.

      ‘Who are you ringing?’ Helen asked curiously.

      ‘The man.’ She was obviously listening to the dialling sound.

      ‘The man?’

      Jenny grinned. ‘Leon Masters.’

      ‘Whatever for?’ Helen demanded.

      ‘He wanted me to let him know you’d got home safely and that you were okay.’

      Helen stood up to leave the room. ‘If he felt that strongly about it he should have come and found out for himself. But of course that would have been too much trouble, and—–’

      ‘He wanted to come,’ Jenny cut in softly. ‘He drove me home and asked to come in, but in the circumstances I thought it might be better if he didn’t.’

      ‘Thank goodness for that! I never want to see him again. And I should stop ringing if I were you, he’ll never hear the telephone above the din that was going on there.’

      ‘But he—Ah, Leon,’ Jenny pursed her mouth pointedly at Helen. ‘Yes, yes, I know you’ve been waiting for my call. Yes. No. Yes. I—–’

      ‘I’m going to bed,’ Helen told her crossly. ‘Don’t wake me up when you come in.’

      Jenny held the receiver away from her ear, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘He wants to talk to you,’ she whispered.

      ‘Tell him we have nothing to talk about,’ and Helen walked out of the room.

      Seconds later Jenny followed her into the bedroom. ‘He says it’s important.’

      ‘We have nothing to say to each other,’ Helen said firmly. ‘Tell him I’m not interested.’

      ‘I can’t tell him that!’ Jenny exclaimed, scandalised.

      Helen shrugged. ‘Okay, tell him what you please, but I want nothing more to do with him. And, Jenny,’ she stopped her cousin in the process of leaving, ‘please don’t tell him anything about my private life.’

      Jenny sighed. ‘I can hardly do that—even I don’t know all of it.’

      ‘Well, don’t tell him what you do know.’

      ‘As if I would!’

      ‘You may not mean to. I was with him long enough to know he could charm anything out of you if he really set his mind to it.’

      ‘Anything?’ Jenny teased.

      ‘Anything,’ Helen returned lightly. As usual Jenny’s bubbly good humour was having a calming effect on her.

      But she lay awake a long time that night after she knew Jenny to be asleep. She might resent and despise Leon Masters’ unwelcome intrusion into her life, might hate him for kissing her, but there was one thing she had to acknowledge. In the two years since the accident, since Michael’s death, she hadn’t cried once, not over anything, and yet half an hour after meeting Leon Masters she had been crying almost hysterically. And she didn’t like the fact that he had been the one to take the first brick off the wall she had built around her emotions; she didn’t like it one bit.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘ARE you sure you won’t come?’ Jenny cajoled. ‘It’s sure to be fun.’

      ‘I’m not in the mood for a boating trip,’ Helen refused, her nose buried in a particularly good murder story.

      Jenny laughed. ‘It isn’t a “boating trip”! Cruising over to France for the day can hardly be called that,’ she said disgustedly.

      Helen rested her chin on her drawn-up knees, the denims she wore old and worn, her blouse casually unbuttoned at her throat for coolness. ‘It is to me. And I don’t want to go to France, I’m perfectly comfortable where I am.’

      ‘But you can read that book any old time.’

      ‘And I can go to France any old time too. I do work in a travel agency, you know. I get discount.’

      ‘But this trip would be for free.’

      ‘I don’t want to go,’ Helen told her firmly. ‘I haven’t forgotten the last time you persuaded me to go out when I didn’t want to.’ She touched her bottom lip, which after a week still showed some signs of bruising. ‘Everyone at work thought someone had slugged me one.’

      ‘It wasn’t my fault Leon Masters took a fancy to you.’

      Helen grimaced. ‘Thank goodness he’s stopped telephoning now.’ He had telephoned every day for five days, but for the last two she had heard nothing from him.

      ‘Why?’ Jenny teased. ‘Were you beginning to weaken?’

      ’Certainly not!’ But Helen was aware her denial didn’t carry conviction. ‘I’m glad he’s stopped trying.’

      ‘Maybe he hasn’t,’ Jenny remarked casually. ‘Maybe he’s just trying a different approach.’

      ‘Absence making the heart grow fonder?’ Helen queried wryly.

      ‘Something like that.’

      ‘It hasn’t,’ she told her firmly.

      ‘Sure?’

      ‘Very sure.’

      ‘And you won’t come today?’ Jenny persisted. ‘You just have time to get ready if you’ve changed your mind, Matt won’t be here for another ten minutes.’

      ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’ Helen stretched, yawning tiredly. ‘I’ve had a hard week, I’m going to lie back and relax.’

      ‘You could relax on the boat.’

      ‘No, thanks. 1 know that crowd, you have to fight off lecherous men all the time. And talking of lecherous men,’ Helen smiled mischievously, ‘you’ve seen rather a lot of Matt this week.’

      Jenny blushed prettily. ‘He isn’t lecherous.’

      Helen quirked an eyebrow. ‘You mean he’s changed?’

      Her cousin laughed. ‘No, silly! He’s just never been that way with me. He even told me off for wearing that dress last Saturday.’

      ‘Mm—well, I wish you hadn’t persuaded me to wear

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