STILL feeling stunned, Loris found herself being helped into the passenger seat. Her case was tossed in the back, and a moment later Jonathan Drummond slid in beside her.

She had made no move to fasten her seat belt, and he leaned over and fastened it for her. His fair hair was darkened by the wet and, feeling curiously detached, she watched a drop of water trickle down his lean cheek.

As they joined a queue of cars and taxis that were leaving the hotel forecourt and slowly filtering into the stream of late-night traffic, he said, ‘You live in Chelsea, I believe?’

Loris pushed back her hood and, making an effort to come to grips with the situation, answered, ‘That’s right. But I wasn’t intending to go to my flat.’

‘Whose flat were you intending to go to?’

She bit her lip, and stayed silent.

Slanting her a glance, he murmured, ‘I see. But you were unexpectedly…shall we say…replaced?’

So he’d seen Mark and the blonde driving away.

Gathering together the tatters of her pride, Loris informed him haughtily, ‘I was intending to go down to my parents’ house.’

‘At Paddleham?’

Wondering how he knew so much, she answered, ‘Yes.’

‘So Longton was supposed to be going too?’

He was too quick by half. Sounding suitably amazed, she asked, ‘How on earth did you deduce that, Holmes?’

Grinning, he answered, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. You didn’t go with your parents, you don’t have a car, and you hadn’t ordered a taxi. Which means you were expecting your fiancé to drive you down.’

Then, sounding as though he cared, ‘No wonder you looked shattered, being treated so shabbily.’

‘It was partly my own fault,’ she admitted.

‘All the same, it must hurt like hell.’

She said, ‘I’m more angry than hurt.’ And discovered it was the truth.

‘Stay that way. Anger is easier to cope with.’

As they neared the head of the queue, he asked, ‘So which is it to be? Chelsea, or Paddleham?’

‘I can’t ask you to drive me all the way to Paddleham,’ she demurred.

‘I’ll be happy to, if that’s where you want to go?’

‘It isn’t really,’ she confessed, dismayed by the thought of having to try and explain Mark’s absence. ‘But I can’t go back to my flat.’

‘Gee that’s tough, doll.’ Sounding like a gangster in a second-rate movie, he asked out of the corner of his mouth, ‘So what are the Mob after you for?’

She laughed in spite of herself.

‘It’s not quite that bad. I agreed to let an old college friend of mine have my flat for tonight and tomorrow night.’

‘And there’s only one bedroom?’

‘Worse. Judy and Paul are on their honeymoon… Monday, they’re flying to Oz to go backpacking.’

‘Hmm… Well, if you can’t go back to your flat and you don’t want to go to Paddleham—’ he gave her a villainous leer ‘—what about my place?’

Loris was about to curtly refuse, when she realised he was pulling her leg.

Lightly, she said, ‘I’m afraid I’m superstitious about going anywhere new on a wet Saturday.’

‘Pity.’

‘But thanks all the same.’

‘Think nothing of it. We aim to please. So what’s it to be?’

Briefly she considered asking him to take her to a hotel, then dismissed the idea. She could well do without the expense. In any case, by breakfast-time next day her parents would require some kind of explanation. Though she dreaded the prospect, her practical streak insisted that it would make sense to be there in person to make it.

Coming to a decision, she said, ‘If you really don’t mind, I think I’d better go to Paddleham.’

‘Paddleham it is.’

A moment or two later they had joined the traffic stream and were heading out of town through gleaming, rain-lashed streets.

Worrying her bottom lip, she wondered how she was going to explain away Mark’s absence.

Of course she could simply tell her parents the truth. But if she did she knew it would be her they would be blaming, saying she’d brought it on herself.

Which in a way she had. If she hadn’t been late for the party in the first place. Though her lateness, she recognised, had only been the catalyst. None of this would have happened if she’d agreed to sleep with Mark when he’d first pressed her to.

But, even after six years, the remembrance of the shame and humiliation she had suffered over Nigel was still a powerful deterrent.

She had been in her first year at art school when she had met him. The son of Sir Denzyl Roberts, one of her father’s wealthy friends, Nigel had been five years older, and light years ahead of her in experience. Expecting her to be like most of the women he had known, he had been surprised and intrigued to find she was supremely innocent.

On her part it had never been a conscious decision to remain a virgin. It had just happened. Since her early teens her unusual beauty had made her a target for every male aged between fifteen and fifty. But, naturally fastidious, she had kept them at bay, disliking their one-track minds and fly-paper hands. Waiting for someone special. Someone she could love.

There had been one boy, different from the rest, a fleeting attraction that might have developed into something deeper if, before she could get to know him, he hadn’t vanished from the scene.

At the same time she had met Nigel. Impressed by his looks and maturity, and perhaps falling in love with love, she had fondly imagined he was that someone special.

Even so, almost out of force of habit, she had held him off until, rapidly losing patience, he had proposed to her.

Though she had still been very young, the match, from her parents’ point of view, had been an advantageous one and, highly delighted, they had encouraged the engagement.

Once the ring was on her finger, Nigel had redoubled his efforts to get her into bed. Certain she loved him, and happy in the knowledge that they were going to be married, she had given in.

Loris had found their lovemaking disappointing, getting little or nothing from it. She had consoled herself with the thought that it was bound to get better when they were used to each other.

It hadn’t.

Blaming herself, her inexperience, she had said nothing, merely kept on trying to please him.

They had been sleeping together for almost three months when, turning up unexpectedly at his flat one evening, intending to surprise him, she had found him with another woman.

Though hurt and bewildered, she had been ready to forgive him, until the girl in his bed had taunted her with the fact that this was no one-off, but was, and had been for some time, a regular arrangement for the nights Loris wasn’t there.

‘He needs a woman who’s got some life in her, who knows how to please a man. Not some frigid statue who just lies there and—’

‘That’s enough!’ Nigel had silenced her at that point.

But it had been too late. As far as Loris was concerned, the damage had been done. Nigel had told this brazen slut of a girl intimate details about something she had considered essentially private and sacrosanct.

Badly humiliated, and furious at the way he had treated her, she had thrown his ring at him and walked out.

When her father and mother had learnt of the broken engagement, deploring the fact that she was ‘losing her chance to marry well’, they had tried to get her to change her mind. But, while refusing to tell them the reason for the break-up, she had made it clear that it was final.

Judy, her friend and room-mate at college, was the only one in whom she had confided her hurt, but down-to-earth as usual, Judy had pulled no punches. ‘Think about it. Would you really want to marry a two-timing rat like that?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Then forget him. He’s not worth a second thought.’

‘I just wish I hadn’t been such a fool.’

‘Well, we all make mistakes. It isn’t the end of the world.’