by Penny Jordan
He cursed and then fell silent, glancing across the small distance that separated them from Yorke and Sally, dancing close together.
Once to see him hold another girl like that would have brought a physical pain so acute that it would have hurt, Autumn reflected, watching them. Now she felt nothing. Her feelings were in cold storage, and that was how she intended them to stay.
The music stopped and Sally and Yorke broke apart. As though they were communicating by telepathy Autumn knew that that dance had just been his opening gambit; that he was stalking her, deliberately trying to instil the weakening fear that had once made her his willing victim.
Snatching up her bag, she told Alan she was going to the cloakroom. Once there she reapplied her lip-gloss and combed her hair, sitting sightlessly in front of the mirror. When the door opened she froze, but it was only Sally, her eyes concerned.
‘Are you all right?’
‘As all right as anyone can be after being confronted by a piece of their past they thought well and truly buried,’ Autumn responded.
Sally’s smile was wryly appreciative. ‘And what a past!’
‘If you’d been married to him you wouldn’t have let him out of your sight, is that what you’re going to say?’
Sally heard the bitterness and shook her head. ‘Autumn, you and I have been friends long enough for me to know the sort of person you are. I admit that Yorke isn’t exactly what I pictured when you talked about your husband. He’s far more mind-blowing; but anyone but a fool can tell with just one look that he’s pure steel. Fun to play with as long as it’s just a game, but I’d hate to have him for my enemy, and it was a pretty rotten trick for Alan to play, unleashing him on you like that without any warning. Yorke’s idea, I suppose?’
Autumn nodded her head.
‘It seems that Yorke threatened to destroy Travel Mates if Alan didn’t help him.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Leave here just as soon as I can. I don’t know what Yorke wants, and I don’t care. There’s only one thing I want from him—a divorce!’
‘Look, would you like me to stay with you tonight?’ Sally suggested sympathetically.
Autumn smiled briefly. ‘No, thanks, but it was a kind thought.’
As she slipped out into the darkness she drew in gulps of fresh air, her mind busily planning her escape. Tomorrow she had to go with the sailing trip round the island, but there was a flight to London from St Lucia, the day after, and with any luck she could be on it. Beyond her arrival in London she refused to think. Every instinct she possessed was overwhelming her with the need to put as great a distance between herself and Yorke as she could.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN she left the restaurant, Autumn didn’t immediately return to her bungalow. Instead she walked along the beach, carrying her flimsy sandals in one hand as she felt the sea-washed firmness of the sand beneath her feet. Tonight she felt a deep longing to give herself up to the vastness of the sea; to be swamped by its embrace, and be swept effortlessly into an unending void where all feeling ceased to exist. It would be so easy to walk into the sea now and keep on walking, and she had to fight against the urge to do so.
Turning her back on the sea, she walked determinedly towards her bungalow, inserting her key in the lock and opening the door.
Once inside she stiffened like a wary cat, sensing danger. Tobacco smoke drifted across the darkened room, but even before the familiar scent reached her, she knew who it was who stood in the shadows by the window.
He crossed the room before she could react, grasping her arm and pulling her towards him, locking the door behind her and pocketing the key with one swift, lithe movement.
‘Still so predictable,’ he mocked. ‘Never fight when you can run.’
‘I wasn’t running, Yorke,’ Autumn told him, shrugging dismissively. ‘If you must know, I was tired. I’ve had a long day and now I want to go to bed.’
It was a tactical mistake and she was annoyed with herself for making it. Yorke’s eyes gleamed silver-green in the darkness; the colour of the sea. Cat’s eyes, watching; waiting eyes.
‘So do I,’ he drawled mockingly.
‘I meant alone,’ Autumn told him without bothering to disguise her withdrawal. ‘I find I prefer it that way, especially in this climate.’ She dropped her shoes on the floor, sliding them on as though the increased inches gave her increased protection, but even so, the top of her head barely reached Yorke’s chin. She knew with a swift stab of satisfaction that her response had surprised him, even though he disguised it. The old Autumn would have been angry and defensive, backing away from him and defying him to touch her.
‘You’ve had experience, then?’ Yorke asked her silkily. ‘But not with friend Alan. You’ve never taken him to your bed, have you, Autumn?’
‘I don’t really think that’s any of your business,’ Autumn replied coolly, reaching up to switch on the light. ‘Do you?’
She felt his indrawn breath, knowing without looking at him that he was angry. So she had pierced his guard. Good! Always in their past encounters he had driven her into a corner, defeating her with his logic and hard determination. Then she had lacked the weapons to fight him, a loser by virtue of her love for him. Now it was different.
‘Have you slept with him?’ Yorke demanded angrily, catching hold of her wrist with sudden violence.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
Autumn was reasonably sure that he would do no such thing, and her success went to her head. It was going to be easier than she had thought. She had allowed her imagination to build Yorke into a more formidable adversary than he actually was, forgetting that during the intervening years she had grown from an inexperienced adolescent, young for her years, into a woman.
‘Please give me my key and leave,’ she demanded coldly. ‘I have an early start in the morning.’
‘That cold, dismissive manner might work with other men,’ Yorke snarled at her, tightening his grip of her wrist, ‘but it doesn’t work with me, Autumn. I know too well what lies under that ice-cold exterior, and I haven’t followed you half way across the world to be dismissed and frozen out. Besides…’ his voice dropped huskily, his eyes wandering over in insolent appraisal, until she felt her lungs would burst with the effort of maintaining her slow even breathing, ‘we both know that the ice is just a façade, don’t we?’
‘What do you want? I’m not in the mood for games, Yorke. Just say your piece and then go.’
His eyes darkened and for a moment Autumn felt the unleashed power of the anger her dismissal had aroused, and she knew that she had not overestimated the danger he represented—far from it. And then he was smiling mockingly, his eyes cruel, as his thumb circled the soft inner flesh of her wrist with insidious determination.
‘I want you, Autumn,’ he said softly.
Once long ago that soft caress would have been sufficient to drive her into his arms, begging brokenly for the satisfaction only his lovemaking could bring, but now, after one deep, shuddering breath, she had herself under control, her eyes empty of everything but distaste as she stared at him.
‘Well, I don’t want you.’
She sensed that her response had disconcerted him, although he recovered quickly, shielding his thoughts from her and watching her from beneath lowered lashes, his hard face unreadable.
‘Well, well, you’ve grown up with a vengeance, haven’t you?’ he drawled softly. ‘Anyone who didn’t know you could never guess that you’re as vulnerable as an oyster without its shell under all that surface toughness.’
Somehow she managed to laugh, a light, silvery sound, her head thrown back challengingly to reveal the smooth, seductive arch of her throat.
‘You’re the one who doesn’t know me, Yorke. Two years is a long time, and the toughness, as you call it, isn’t just on the surface. It goes way, way down. God knows why you had to drag Alan into our private affairs, but I’ve already told him, I’m leaving Travel Mates as of
tonight, and I shall be on the first available flight out of St Lucia. You and I have nothing to say to one another.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Yorke told her softly. ‘I’m going to see to that. And you’re not as tough as you like to pretend. You’ve forgotten, Autumn, I know everything there is to know about you.’
She smiled again.
‘Not true, Yorke. You knew all there was to know about a girl called Autumn. That girl no longer exists. And you don’t know the first thing about the woman she’s become.’
‘Then perhaps I ought to start finding out,’ Yorke breathed huskily, but Autumn was too quick for him, freeing herself from his grasp and going to stand by the window.
‘Our marriage is over, Yorke, and all I want from you now is my freedom.’
‘That could be arranged.’
She whirled round, staring at him.
‘You’ll agree to our divorce?’
‘I might, under certain conditions.’
‘What conditions?’ Autumn breathed, knowing the moment that she spoke that she had betrayed herself.
‘Not so changed after all,’ Yorke taunted. ‘You’re still as impetutous. I want you back, Autumn, as my wife, living in my home.’
His words caught her off guard, and she flung at him bitterly. ‘Home? And where would that be, Yorke? The flat in Knightsbridge? The one you spent at least one night a month in, in between your business trips. Thanks, but no, thanks. There isn’t any way you could persuade me to go back to you. No prisoner ever enters the condemned cell twice.’
‘Is that what our marriage was to you? And yet you entered it willingly enough, as I remember; even to the extent of being quite prepared to anticipate its vows.’ His mouth twisted wryly at the dark colour flooding her skin.
He was so arrogant, so sure of her capitulation, Autumn reflected angrily, staring out into the night. Over the last two years she had developed an armour against the past; an unscalable wall behind which she had dammed up everything that had happened, including the girl she had once been. Now Yorke was trying to tear down that wall.
‘Don’t try to pretend you ever cared about our marriage, Yorke,’ she said bitterly. ‘We both know that if I hadn’t left voluntarily when I did, you would have had me forcibly removed. You told me yourself that our marriage was a mistake and that I bored you. And it didn’t take you long to replace me either.’
A shaft of pain lanced through her, as the past broke through the barriers, and she tensed automatically, as though by doing so she could hold it back.
‘Why didn’t you divorce me when I left?
Yorke shrugged. ‘Why should I? A wife is an excellent deterrent against unwanted involvements.’
His cynicism took her breath away.
‘But you don’t want me… you don’t love me…’
The words fell between them and she wished them unsaid. They had been her tearful refrain to so many of their quarrels. ‘You don’t love me…’ And never once had he denied it.
‘I need you.’
‘Need me?’ She stared at him, her eyes darkening. ‘You never needed anyone in your entire life—you used to boast about it, telling me how invulnerable you were. I’ve built a new life for myself now, Yorke, and I don’t need you.’
‘Just my consent to our divorce, and I’d give you that; for four months of your time.’
Four months! Autumn wrapped her arms protectively around her body, chilled despite the warmth of the tropical night. During the brief span of their marriage she had come to know that beneath Yorke’s surface, charm lay a cold implacability to have his own way, which would admit no fallibility, no opposition, and now he was saying that he wanted her back. Why?
She asked him, tensing herself against his answer, not knowing what to expect.
‘Business,’ he told her succinctly.
She was glad he couldn’t see her expression. ‘Business?’ Hadn’t that been partially to blame for their break-up? They should never have married in the first place; Yorke had never intended that they should. A brief affair had been all that he wanted, but he had underestimated her inexperience. It would have been better by far if she had simply had an affair with him, she admitted with hindsight, but at nineteen… She sighed, pulling her thoughts away from the past and turning round to face him.
‘Business?’ she reiterated with mocking bitterness. ‘You don’t change, do you, Yorke?’
‘Perhaps if there’d been something worth coming home to I might have come home more often,’ Yorke replied cruelly. ‘But we’re not talking about the past, Autumn, we’re talking about the future. I’m in line for a K—a knighthood,’ he explained curtly when she looked blank. ‘Services to industry, you know the sort of thing.’
She hid her surprise under a cool smile. Where his business was concerned Yorke was tirelessly ambitious, but she had never known position or wealth matter to him for their own sake.
As though he had followed her train of thought he added coolly, ‘For myself I don’t give a damn, but it will do the airline good, and the way competition is these days, every little helps. The problem is that I’ve been warned that under the present very correct government that it will greatly aid my chances of success if I were seen to be respectably married. The playboy image is not favoured, and that’s why I need a wife.’
‘You bastard,’ Autumn said huskily. ‘Go and find yourself one somewhere else, and get out of here.’
He laughed without humour. ‘What did you expect? That I’d come chasing all this way just to get you back into my bed? You always did have a highly charged imagination. You were good, Autumn, but not that good,’ he added brutally. ‘And as for finding myself a wife somewhere else, why should I, when I’ve still got you?’
Their eyes met and held, and Autumn could feel the hot anger welling up inside her, fighting it down as she tried to remain cool and controlled.
‘Stop it, Yorke,’ she warned him. ‘I’m not your possession. And I’m not coming back to you.’
‘Afraid?’ he taunted. ‘You haven’t changed at all, Autumn. You’re still running scared, still terrified of facing up to life.’
She tried to block out his words, but they held a core of truth which echoed bitterly through her.
‘I’m not afraid of you, or any man!’ she lashed back angrily. ‘The past is past for me, Yorke.’
‘But it isn’t, is it?’ he said softly. ‘How can it be while you’re still my wife—and that’s just what you are,’ he reminded her suavely. ‘No matter how much you’d like to deny it or forget it you can’t, can you? And how you hate it!’
His taunts made her writhe with mingled rage and anguish.
‘You’re a coward, Autumn,’ he said coolly. ‘You think you can escape from what happened by pretending not to see it, instead of facing up to it. Or is it something else you fear?’ he taunted softly. ‘Perhaps you’re not as indifferent to me as you pretend?’
‘Indifferent!’ She went white with anger, unable to prevent the highly charged surge of emotion his accusation aroused.
‘I’m not indifferent to you, Yorke,’ she told him bitterly. ‘I hate you, and I’ll go on hating you until the day I die. Does that satisfy you?’
She was panting slightly, her eyes glittering as she threw the words at him. ‘And as for our marriage… Get out of here, Yorke!’
She turned her back on him, fighting for self-control. They had played this scene so often before. Her defiant; him taunting, sure of her ultimate capitulation, which had always been forthcoming, but she was not going to allow her bitterness to give him victory now. The ardent passion which had once held her in thrall to him had been tamed and the searingly painful lessons his humiliation of her pride had inflicted upon her mind acted as a curb upon her senses. She felt like a laboratory mouse trained to react to light and heat, as the sensual softness of his voice reminded her of the bitter pain which had followed her abject surrender, freezing her emotions behind a wall of ice.
> ‘I’m not the floor show, Yorke,’ she said coldly. ‘I know you get a kick out of baiting me, but you aren’t going to get a reaction. Those days are gone, and I’m immune—you saw to that. Another two years and I’ll be free of you for good, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’
She hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and when his hands grasped her wrists, pulling her back against the hard male warmth of his body, she froze instantly.
‘So, you’re immune, are you?’ he whispered savagely, turning her towards him and imprisoning her against him, his mouth feathering tormentingly against her throat, reawakening aching memories of how she had once responded to that light caress.
Her mouth felt dry, every muscle tensed against his deliberate and calculated assault upon her senses. So many times before he had broken her self-control like this, but this time she was not going to give way.
She knew the exact moment when his cool amusement gave way to hard anger. She could feel it in the sudden changed pressure of his mouth as it moved against her skin, trying to prise her lips apart as they remained stubbornly closed to him, her eyes open and defiant as they met the smouldering rage in his.
When at last he raised his head, his eyes were murderous.
‘Finished?’ Autumn asked sweetly, enjoying her victory.
‘Like hell!’ Yorke responded, bending his head again and taking her still parted lips in a kiss of searing brutality, from which she automatically withdrew, closing her mind to what was happening and standing within the circle of his hard arms like a stuffed doll, and still it went on, punishing, probing, ripping the scars from old wounds and leaving her exposed and bleeding, her nails digging deep into the palms of her hands as she fought not to betray any emotion.
Yorke released her with a muttered oath and pushed her away, his face suffused with angry colour.
‘You little bitch, you enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ he grated.
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
‘No, I didn’t enjoy it, Yorke, no woman enjoys being humiliated and degraded, but I have learned to distinguish between punishment and pleasure. Now perhaps you understand what I mean when I say that nothing on this earth would induce me to live with you again as your wife.’