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.As soon as she had spoken, though, she wondered why on earth she had bothered.She didn’t want to involve herself in this family.Let them get on with their own internal problems.The best thing she could do would be to steer clear of them.Dominic looked at her through narrowed, speculative eyes.‘He didn’t strike me as a man under pressure.’‘He’s too polite to kick up a fuss over something like that,’ she muttered under her breath.‘Is that what you tell yourself? And what will you tell yourself the next time temptation gets in his way? That he’s just too polite to refuse?’Katherine swung round and began walking away.‘I’m not finished with you,’ he said from behind her, and she hesitated just a fraction too long.Instead of running swiftly down the stairs, she paused, with her back to him.‘You force your way into this house on some strange mission to defend yourself, but it’s quite pointless.You’re no more interested in me than I am in you, and I’m fully aware of that.I have no idea what my sister said to you, but I don’t see the necessity of warning you off me.Why should I? I made a mistake with you once and I’m not a man to make the same mistake a second time.’‘Good.’ She turned to face him.She had swept her hair over one shoulder and she twirled the bottom of the mane in her fingers.‘But if you’re so concerned about your precious pride, then why don’t you look at your behaviour with this man of yours? Four years of chasing, and for what? You tell me that your life is perfect, but I look at you and I can only think that desperation is driving you on to accept a man like that, who clearly doesn’t want any more from you than the occasional meal out and a friendly ear.’He had taken a few steps towards her and she stared at him angrily, her heart thudding.‘Oh, you know all this after a five-minute meeting, do you? How clever! But you’re hardly in a fit position to lecture about relationships, are you? Jack told me about…’ Here her voice fizzled out.She saw a flash of fury cross his face.‘Told you about…what?’‘Nothing.’‘Told you about my wife, I take it?’‘I’m sorry,’ Katherine mumbled.‘I had no right to mention your wife.’‘No.’ Dominic’s voice was cold.‘You hadn’t.But now that you have, you might just as well hear it from my mouth.My marriage to Franise was a mistake.In fact, the only good thing to emerge from it was Claire.Franise was demanding, avaricious, vain.’‘Why did you marry her in the first place?’‘Because,’ he said grimly, ‘she was exciting.’ His lips twisted into a sneer.‘And excitement is an addictive drug, isn’t it? Unfortunately, it is rarely enough to take two people through a marriage.’‘Does excitement mean that much to you?’ she asked faintly.‘What are the alternatives? Tedium? Monotony? The relentless treadmill of boredom?’‘Of course not.’‘Of course not,’ he drawled in a vaguely sneering voice.‘And you would know, would you? You tell me that I’m unfit to lecture about relationships, but I hardly see how you’re in a position to lecture about the nuts and bolts of marriage.’‘I wasn’t lecturing,’ Katherine protested heatedly.She had dropped her hands to her sides and her fists were clenched.‘Have you had any excitement in your life since London?’ he asked softly, and now he was standing so close to her that she could feel his restless energy radiating out from him in waves.It was an unsettling feeling.She felt like someone standing on a mountain, where the air was thin and breathing was difficult.‘Excitement isn’t only about clubs and expensive dinners out and foreign travel,’ she muttered defensively.‘So tell me what it is about.I’m dying to hear.’‘No, you’re not,’ she said, taking a deep breath and staring him straight in the eyes.‘You’re dying to make fun of me, of what I do now.I know that I’m not the same person you met in London six years ago, Dominic Duvall.I know that my life probably seems utterly dull to someone like you but, believe it or not, it’s the life I love.’‘How did you get involved in teaching?’ he asked curiously, and his eyes were sharp and searching.‘Did David persuade you into it?’‘No one could persuade me into a career I didn’t want.You must think that I have no mind of my own.’‘Women can be very gullible when they’re in love.’She didn’t know how this conversation had arrived where it had, but alarm was slowly replacing tension.All these questions, softly spoken but insistent nevertheless, were targeted, she suspected, at discovering why, precisely why, she had walked out on him.The past was never over.It allowed itself to be shut away for the sake of convenience, but circumstance could easily pull it out once again.Was this what had happened? Had he forgotten all about her, only to find that, now their paths had crossed, he needed to make sense of what must have been nonsensical at the time?He wasn’t interested in her.He himself admitted it.He was a man who enjoyed excitement.He needed it.In his professional life as well as his personal life.He had married his wife because she gave him that thrill of excitement, and even though that had failed he would always be drawn to the same sort of woman.He had only ever gone out with her because, at that time in her own life, when she was living on a razor’s edge and fuelled with the kind of raw energy which she would never again want to recapture, she had appealed to him.‘Gullible women,’ she said calmly, ‘are gullible all the time, whether they’re in love or not.I am not a gullible woman.’‘You make that sound like a virtue,’ he said with mild contempt, ‘but there’s no virtue to living life on one level all the time.Does David turn you on?’ He asked the question as naturally as though he was asking the time of day.‘You must be joking if you think that I’m going to answer that.’Her eyes were wide and startled.She backed a little and came up against the banister.‘Why shouldn’t you? The only reason you wouldn’t would be if you were scared to, and the only reason you’d be scared to would be if the answer was no.’He laughed under his breath, as though he found the situation amusing, and then reached out his arms and propped them on either side of her.‘Of course, I know the answer to the question already,’ he told her lazily.‘He doesn’t turn you on in the slightest.It’s very easy to pick up signals from other people’s body language.They often give themselves away without having to speak at all.Poor David.He might appeal to you as a possible marriage partner, in the absence of anyone else, but sexually he doesn’t appeal at all, does he?’‘Why ask me? You already know all the answers, or so you claim.’‘Has there been anyone in your life in the past six years, Katherine? You had your fling with me and then ran back to the man you wanted.But that didn’t work out.Did you make the decision then to bury yourself in your job and make believe that you were happy?’He was still bitter.Under all that cool self-control, under all that cynical amusement, he was still bitter.It made no difference that he no longer wanted her and certainly felt nothing for her, the bitterness was still there, running through him like a black thread.She saw that in a blinding flash of comprehension.‘Stop trying to pigeon-hole me,’ she said angrily
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