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  ‘All right, young Aura,’ Alick interrupted calmly, ‘what’s the matter?’

  Her lips trembled. It would have been altogether too easy to fling herself on him as she used to when she was sixteen, but this was something that even the kindest of cousins couldn’t help her with. Resolutely keeping her face turned away, she shook her head.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said dispassionately, ‘it can help to talk things over with a more or less impartial observer.’

  She had taken her woes and fears to him for so long that it had become a habit, one she had tried to break. Was Flint right? Had she become accustomed to looking for support?

  ‘Come on, Aura,’ Alick said insistently. ‘Spill.’

  She surrendered. ‘I can’t marry Paul,’ she said baldly.

  He nodded. ‘Flint, is it?’

  ‘Is it so obvious?’ she blurted. Would Paul realise who it was?

  ‘Not to anyone else, I imagine, but I’ve known you far longer than most people.’

  She bit her lip against an onslaught of tears. He waited silently until she regained enough composure to speak. ‘The awful thing is that I don’t love Flint. I mean—I don’t know him. I do love Paul, so much, he’s everything I want in a man, and I can’t bear to hurt him, but—’ she clenched her hands, forcing the words out for the first time ‘—I don’t want to go to bed with him.’

  ‘And you do want to go to bed with Flint.’

  Alick’s voice was without censure, but Aura nodded in shame. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you remember Jenna? I was engaged to her when I met Laurel.’

  Aura had forgotten. Alick and his wife were so ideal a couple, so much in love, that the girl he had chosen first had faded into the past. ‘Jenna,’ she said after a moment. ‘Yes, I remember her. She was nice, but very young.’

  ‘At the time she was exactly what I thought I wanted. But I knew the minute I met Laurel that it wasn’t going to work.’

  ‘Yes, but Laurel was in love with you,’ she said wearily. ‘I remember; it was obvious right from the start. Flint is not in the least in love with me. He’s made that quite plain.’

  ‘Has he? That doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that you can’t marry Paul McAlpine feeling the way you do about Jansen.’

  It seemed so easy, stated in Alick’s calm voice. Aura gulped and nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  Wretchedly, Aura sighed. ‘I’ll have to tell Paul. He’s in Samoa, and won’t be back until Tuesday. Then it will be Natalie.’

  ‘You can leave her to me,’ he said cynically.

  She sat with her head bent, pleating the folds of her skirt between fingers that trembled. ‘It’s not so simple,’ she muttered. ‘Paul’s buying a flat for Mother—she’ll be so angry, so upset.’

  ‘Come on now, Aura, you know better than that! Your mother made a mess of her life. There’s no need to make a mess of yours as well just to keep her in clover.’

  ‘Paul will be hurt.’

  He said remorselessly, ‘Jenna was hurt when I broke it off with her. I don’t know what’s going to happen between you and Flint, whether he’s just an excuse because in your inner heart you know that marrying Paul is wrong, but the point is that you don’t want to marry Paul.’

  Her teeth clamped down on her lips so hard she could taste the blood. ‘But I do,’ she wailed,

  ‘Really? Then what’s all this about?’

  ‘Oh, hell!’

  ‘Face facts, Aura.’

  ‘I hate people who tell me to face facts,’ she shouted, thumping her clenched fist on the arm of the lounger.

  ‘That’s Natalie speaking, not you. It’s not going to be fun,’ he admitted with wry humour, ‘but Laurel and I will help as much as we can.’

  For a moment she was tempted. ‘No, I got myself into this,’ she said huskily, ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  The sun was setting smokily and dramatically behind a bank of clouds when she arrived back home in a far more stable frame of mind. Unfortunately, it was short-lived.

  When she walked through the door her mother leapt to her feet, and in her surprise dropped a piece of paper.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Aura said, automatically reaching down to pick it up.

  ‘No, no, it’s all right.’ Natalie’s voice was even more betraying than the speed with which she snatched the paper away.

  But Aura had recognised the heading. She asked in a ghost voice, ‘How much do you owe on your credit card?’

  Natalie’s hand shook. ‘Only a few thousand,’ she said unsteadily.

  ‘A few thousand?’ Aura took advantage of her mother’s shock to wrest the account from her. She looked down, and felt the colour run from her skin, leaving her cold and disorientated. ‘That’s more than a few thousand dollars.’

  ‘Yes, well, how do you think I’ve been able to keep going?’ Her mother was angry now, her usual tactic when confronted with money.

  Tears next, Aura thought, fighting a bewildering sense of disconnectedness.

  Sure enough, Natalie’s eyes misted delicately. ‘It’s all right,’ she said placatingly. ‘I’ll be able to pay for it as soon as you get married.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Aura’s voice was constricted, the emotion so tightly restrained it sounded harsh.

  ‘Well, when I move into the new apartment I can sell this one, and pay the bill.’

  Aura sat down, holding herself very stiff while she strove to assimilate this new blow.

  If she didn’t marry Paul there was no way she or her mother could pay the bill.

  She said dully, ‘What on earth did you spend it on?’

  ‘I had debts when Lionel died—he wouldn’t give me any money for a year or so. I had to pay for the funeral, and then—I had to get a dress made for the wedding. Well, I can’t wear just any old rag, can I...’ Natalie gestured vaguely, before beginning to weep in real earnest.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Aura said tonelessly. ‘Don’t cry. We’ll manage.’

  ‘Of course we’ll manage,’ Natalie said, patting her eyes with a tiny, lacy handkerchief. She held out her hand for the bill, and spent the rest of the evening resolutely ignoring it and her daughter.

  Who was racked by an inner torment she couldn’t let her mother see. Inactivity fretted her nerves to shreds, for of course she couldn’t do anything until she had told Paul. Unable to sleep again that night, she greeted the new week with resignation. She had clung to her great-grandmother’s garnets through everything else, but now they would have to go. And even though they were the much rarer and more valuable green stones, they were not going to sell for anything like the amount Natalie owed.

  A visit to the firm of jewellers who had sold her great-grandfather the garnets so many years before confirmed her fears. Dry-eyed, she handed them over, got the cheque, and paid it into Natalie’s credit card account.

  On her way back home, she sat slumped in the bus, trying to work out ways of getting the rest of the money. Her computer set-up wouldn’t bring much in, but it might buy time. They would have to mortgage the flat. I had better, she thought grimly, make sure Mother hasn’t already done that.

  She came home to find Natalie staring at a heap of presents that had arrived by courier. She looked sideways at Aura, then said quickly, ‘Oh, good, you’re back in time.’

  ‘In time for what?’

  Her mother laughed. ‘Oh, in time for you to take these over to Paul’s.’

  ‘I’ll take them over later,’ Aura said vaguely. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, take them now. You know they clutter up this place far too much. Get a taxi, there’s a good girl, and drop that pile off. Didn’t I see another registered parcel card in the mail?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’d better collect it, too, hadn’t you?’ There was no way Aura was going to be able to carry the boxes to the nearest bus stop. What the hell, she thought numbly. She had just enough money to pay for a t
axi. So she rang one, and when it arrived piled the gifts into it and directed him to the post office. She collected the registered one and put it into the cab, when a sudden idea came to her.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ she said, and dashed across the pavement to the phone box. She dialled Paul’s number, then stood with white knuckles waiting for someone to answer the call.

  No one did, so Flint wasn’t there. No, of course he wouldn’t be, he’d be at work. If he had any decency at all, she thought savagely as she got back into the cab and gave Paul’s address, he’d have moved back to his own apartment.

  But his presence was stamped all over the flat. The morning’s newspaper lay folded on a table, a rinsed coffee-mug sat upturned on the bench, and a silk tie that didn’t belong to Paul had been slung across the back of the sofa.

  Her stomach lurched. Setting her mouth into a thin line, she took the parcels into the spare room they had set aside for gifts.

  Once they were safely stowed she stood for a moment staring around at the array. There were some lovely things there, chosen with love and care, objects she had looked forward to seeing in her home. Sudden tears stung her eyes unbearably.

  She had almost reached the door when it was pushed open. The blood drained from her skin as Flint’s tall, lithe form strode through, blocking the light from the landing.

  Unable to speak, she stopped abruptly. His eyes raked her pale face, came to rest for a wildly unsettling moment on her mouth, then moved to hold her appalled gaze.

  ‘You look like death,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks. What are you doing here?’

  Almost absently he said, ‘Organising myself out of here and into my own place.’

  Aura bit her lip. The silence was so oppressive that she gabbled, ‘I’ve just put some wedding-gifts in—in the room.’

  His mouth hardened. There was a moment of taut silence before he said levelly, ‘I see. So greed overcame integrity. But perhaps you didn’t have much integrity to begin with.’

  Anger burned deep and revivifying beneath the shock and the pain. He jumped to conclusions far too fast. ‘Whatever I do, it’s none of your concern,’ she snapped back. ‘Mind your own business, will you?’

  ‘Just tell me,’ he commented. ‘Are you planning to go ahead with it?’

  She lifted her head arrogantly. ‘I’ve already told you what I’ll do. I’ll do what’s right for me.’

  He said something between his teeth, something she was rather glad she didn’t hear, then snarled, ‘Like hell you will! What got to you? Has Natalie sung a sad story about how awful it is to be poor, perhaps? Or did you decide that so many women down the centuries have gritted their teeth and counted their bank balances whenever their husbands touched them that it must be easy to do?’

  ‘You make me sick,’ she said frigidly, turning to walk past him and out of the door.

  He grabbed her arm. ‘That’s nothing to what you do to me, Aura—’

  ‘Let me go!’

  He exerted some of his strength. Not enough to hurt her, but more than enough to pull her inexorably close to him.

  She said icily, ‘Take your hands off me, you coward.’

  His eyes had narrowed into golden slits, but at that they opened, and it was like looking into the pits of hell. ‘That’s a funny word for you to use,’ he said offensively, his breath stirring the strands of hair across her forehead. ‘You’re a lying, betraying bitch, a cold little whore with her eyes firmly fixed on the main chance, yet you call me a—’

  Stung, as angry as he was, she spat, ‘Yet in spite of all that you want me! So what does that make you, Flint?’

  ‘A fool,’ he said, his lips barely moving. He lifted his free hand and ran a long finger from one side of her jawbone to the other, tilting her face to meet his merciless scrutiny.

  It was like being hit with a cattle prod; a violent shock of electricity sizzled through her, arching her body into the warmth and heat of his. Aura tried to wrench herself away, but his hand on her arm kept her close. Something ugly and violent moved in the glittering depths behind his thick, straight lashes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, cupping her jaw, stroking up towards her ear, toying with the small sensitive lobe.

  The breath stopped in Aura’s throat. She had never thought of her ear as an erogenous zone, never realised that it could send such intensely erotic messages to the rest of her body. She stood with wide, dazed eyes while the small caress seared through her inhibitions and the fragile bonds of her honour.

  ‘You have an amazing air of innocence, as though everything we do is fresh and new to you,’ he said softly, watching her with a cold smile barely curving his hard mouth. ‘Does it surprise you when you enjoy a man’s touch, Aura? Hasn’t any other man made you burn like this?’

  Her throat was dry; she couldn’t have spoken even if she had found words to say. His finger moved, slid into the sensitive inner reaches of her ear, and she shivered, mutely begging him to stop, to let her go.

  ‘I wonder why?’ he said in that gravelly voice. ‘Was it because you chose them for their money?’

  Trying to hide from the mesmerising spell of his gaze, to free herself of the boneless lethargy that had swept over her at his touch, she closed her heavy lids.

  Abruptly he let her go. ‘Do you want me to tell him?’

  For a moment she was tempted, but almost immediately shook her head. She couldn’t take the coward’s way out.

  ‘Tell him as soon as he gets home,’ he ordered, looking at his watch. ‘Or I’ll do it for you.’

  Aura looked at him with astonishment and anger in her heart. He had manipulated her, once more. Thank God, she thought defiantly, she didn’t love him. But oh, when he touched her, her body knew its master.

  Then Paul said from the doorway, ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  Shame flooded Aura in chilling waves, cutting the ground from beneath her feet. The face she turned to the door was slack-jawed in shock, her crimson cheeks and drowsy eyes giving her away completely.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say, anything to do, except stare at a man she had never known existed. Her gentle Paul was gone and in his place there was a hard-faced stranger.

  He knew, she thought, panic-stricken as she realised that he had seen her in Flint’s arms.

  ‘What do you think?’ Flint asked harshly, looking at his friend with cold speculation.

  ‘It looks as though I should have been protecting my interests.’ Paul’s pleasant voice was icy. ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Nothing’s been going on,’ Aura said quickly, but her face and tone gave her away.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said wearily. ‘For God’s sake, Aura, don’t lie! What I saw a moment ago wasn’t—’ He closed his eyes a second, then forced them open. He looked only at her, not at the man who stood beside her with the watchful, alert patience of a tiger ready to make a kill. ‘It wasn’t what Flint said, or even the way he touched you, it was the—how long has it been going on?’

  Aura took a deep breath, her eyes filling with useless tears as they searched his beloved face.

  ‘Since I saw her,’ Flint told him, his face implacable.

  ‘No,’ Aura whispered hopelessly.

  He looked at her with something like contempt. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you slept together?’

  The question came toneless and fast. Aura looked at the man she was still engaged to and saw fists clench. ‘No!’ The word burst from her lips, but Flint’s abrasive voice overrode hers.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked again. This time there was a note of insolence in the question, as though he wanted to provoke Paul.

  Anger and a corroding bitterness darkened Paul’s face. ‘You’ve never let friendship stand in the way of a woman you wanted, have you, Flint?’ he said, the white line around his lips belying his calmness. ‘Get out, both of you.’

  ‘Paul—’

  The imperative summons of a beeper interrupted, bu
t Aura scarcely heard it. When she said his name again, he didn’t even look at her, merely repeated indifferently, ‘Get out.’

  Amazingly, Flint reached over and grabbed a telephone, beginning to punch in numbers. Equally amazingly, Paul didn’t try to stop him.

  Aura turned away, her dreams shattering on the floor behind her. The sound of Flint’s voice barking orders into the telephone was the last thing she heard as she closed the door behind her and walked out, away from the happy life she had so longed for, out into a darkness and cold nowhere as extreme as the desolation in her heart.

  It was raining, but she didn’t notice, bent only on reaching the sanctuary of home. She didn’t think about the scene she had just endured; once she began she wouldn’t be able to control herself, and it would be too humiliating to walk the three miles home weeping.

  In the end that was what she did, rain mingling with the tears and washing them away in a chilly flood. Fortunately Natalie wasn’t there. Still offended, she had decided to dine with friends a little out of town; if the weather worsened she intended to stay the night. Aura prayed that she would.

  After she had showered and changed into old jeans and a jersey, she sat down with her notebook in front of her and began methodically to call every guest, every firm, to tell them that the wedding was cancelled.

  Two hours later she put the receiver down, exhausted, feeling as though she had been beaten with a stick. Tears trickled down her cheeks; she bent her head and wept for everything she had thrown away because of bondage to a man who didn’t love her, a man she didn’t love.

  The knock on the door made her freeze with sheer terror; she couldn’t let anyone see her like this. As she tried to stop the sobs that forced themselves upwards, she crouched like a threatened wild animal into the chair.

  ‘I know you’re there.’ Flint’s voice, commanding and abrupt. ‘Let me in, Aura.’

  A tiny flame of hope, wavering in the winds of uncertainty, sprang to life inside her. Wiping her eyes, she walked across to open the door.

  He looked big and vital and braced against some undefined tension, his harshly-contoured face and dark hair sprinkled with raindrops. The hand over her heart clenched tightly as she let herself recall the honeyed tide of desire his touch aroused.