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'Come back after you said no to the proposal?' he incised with icy bite 'I did I was a real sucker for punishment in those days No more'

She was tre happen between Steve and me!'

'You were in his ar down in his flat' '

And abruptly it came to her when he nant She had started to cry in the students' union bar and Steve had flushed her out at speed On the way back to his flat, she had told hioodness' sake, all he did was hug me… try to comfort me because I was so upset about the baby and you!'

'In that order, I notice The horror of the baby, then me'

So snapped inside Ashley That crack was the last straw in the state she was in She stalked across the room and clutched him by the lapels of his Ar fever of emotion

'That was the day I found out that I was pregnant and I was cli the wall!' she lashed out 'And you dare to tellhim do what you should have been there to do? Instead you were spying onup filthy suspicions on non-existent evidence? How dare you tell me that no dare you? You should be too ashamed to admit that you came that close and wimped out last minute!'

Her vehemence clearly astounded hiritted teeth

'Oh, didn't you?' Although he was a foot taller, Ashley glowered wrathfully up at hies and not he She had such a fierce hold on his jacket that he would have had to break her fingers to shake her off 'You wih, Vito You didn't trustpride first!'

'That's a-'

'And then, to crown it all, you went and ed to ive that? You oweyou wake up without a knife stuck between your ribs!'

Still in a te

mpest of unrestrained emotion, she jerked her hands away froreat that she literally didn't trust herself not actually to strike him now that she finally knehat had kept hio A silly, trivial hablethat had none the less blown her life and her hope of happiness right out of the water But Vito had still been cool-headed enough to carry out a dae limitation exercise on his own life-that hat hurt her so s that Vito ht reasonably have done or felt then, but not one of the round immediately to ask another woman to marry him!

'I didn't love her' The confession was reluctant, low-pitched as if only the silence dredged it from him

And at last her bitterness was vindicated but most ironically it didn't make her feel any better He had loved her but he had still h, and that knowledge couldn't even begin to cauterise her wounds Another revivifying surge of fury came to her rescue She had suffered so much for so little

'Want to talk so better communication?' she demanded tremulously 'You didn't love her but you married her-'

'You didn't want ave a stark laugh of rampant disbelief 'Don't you knohen a woe and six children before I enty-five… I did not say no to you!'

Vito looked dazed That aspect of that final hostile confrontation had evidently never occurred to him 'Dio,' he said thickly