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‘Oh, but I thought the kitchen was the best bet’

‘If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, then that’s fine You knohere the door is’

‘Oh, don’t think you’re going to get off that easily,’ Leo grated ‘I can’t wait to hear what you have to say’

He followed her into the sitting roo herself and keeping as far away fros he had no tied him away from whatever lame story was about to unfold If this was so promises he would inevitably fail to keep, however sexy her body was, then she was barking up the wrong tree, and he would enjoy telling her so in no uncertain teruessed that she was all about flowers, chocolate and ros and the picture-postcard garden She didn’t kno the real world worked, but how could she, caught up in her own i in the middle of the countryside where life evolved at such a slower pace?

‘It doesn’tsomewhere in the middle, ‘whether you fancy me or I fancy you’

‘And ould that be? I’her plane so for?’ He had sat down on the sofa, legs crossed She had switched on a couple of lalow The shadows made her look all the softer, more vulnerable, more unbearably feminine He looked past her to the mantelpiece, which was cluttered with pictures in various size of fraht cynically There was no mantelpiece in his penthouse apartroaning under the weight of photos

‘Because I used to be married!’ There It was out in the open now, and the silence that greeted her revelation was deafening She could al to take it in

‘You were married?’ he asked He didn’t knohy he found that so shocking, but he did

‘To aintended to leave out all extraneous detail, Heather was now overcoe everyexperience ‘I…We were…I suppose you could say that ere childhood sweethearts Went to the sa out when I was seventeen and he was eighteen, although we’d known each other long before then Grew up together, you ht say’

Leo had said, in a voice that had been thick with sarcas to be all ears, that he couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say He hadn’t expected this

‘You were married,’ he repeated slowly

‘Yes Haven’t I just told you that?’

‘I’ it hard to take in’

‘Why?’ Because, she thought, he didn’t think she really had what it took to get a guy for keeps? ‘No, scrap that’

‘Because a husband isn’t usually so er on the scene’ He didn’t add thatthe sy about husbands who had left the, having been out with a couple of divorcees in the past, neither of which had lasted longer than three months apiece Who wanted to spend what little free ti about her ex? ‘Where is he now?’ Leo asked

He was already envisaging the type of guy she hting him Once bitten, twice shy

‘In Hong Kong, as a matter of fact’

‘Hong Kong? What the hell is your ex-husband doing in Hong Kong?’

‘You’re amazed that I wasYou don’t have a very high opinion of h there were tears just below the surface She was reher Brian had climbed, the ht sort of wo it hard to believe that she e and the gardening interests?

‘It has nothing to do hether or not I have a high opinion of you’ Married? Hong Kong? He had ed to s his stupefaction that the wouy, the teenage sweetheart, must have been a country lad, had done whatever country lads did for a living—sheep far, possibly—Heather would have beco a far apart

Sheep far

‘You portrayed yourself in a certain light,’ Leo told her evenly ‘I took you at face value You never onceBelieve it or not, my immediate conclusion wasn’t that you were a divorcee Get where I’ with this? If you can find the insult there, then please point it out’