6

“And telling me that may well prove to be your second.” Dark hooded eyes rested on her. “You slept with me the night before you disappeared. You lay in my arms and you made love with me, knowing that you planned to leave…”

“H-habit,” she stammered.

Hard fingers bit into her wrist, trailing her closer without her volition. “Habit?” he ground out roughly, incredulously.

Her tongue was glued to the dry roof of her mouth. Mutely she nodded, and recoiled from the raw fury and revulsion she read in his unusually expressive eyes. “You're hurting me,” she mumbled.

He dropped her wrist contemptuously. “My compliments, then, on an award-winning performance. Habit inspired you with extraordinary enthusiasm.”

She reddened to the roots of her hair, attacked by the sort of memories she never let out of her subconscious even on temporary parole. To remember was to hate herself. And that night she had known in her heart of hearts that she would never be with Travis again. With uncharacteristic daring, she had woken him up around dawn, charged with a passionate despair that could only find a vent in physical expression, before she'd asked him that question about getting married. She cringed inwardly at the memory of him turning her down. Loving someone who did not love you was the cruellest kind of suffering.

“I don't remember,” she lied weakly, loathing him so much that she hurt with the force of her suppressed emotions. He made her a stranger to herself. He had done that in the past and he was doing it now. She was not the Freya who understood and forgave other people's foibles at this moment. She had paid too high a price for loving Travis.

“Habit.” He said it again, but so softly; yet she was chilled.

Quite by accident, she registered, she had stung his ego, stirring the primitive depths of a masculinity that was rarely, if ever, challenged by her sex. She wasn't the only woman to make a fool of herself over Travis. Women went to the most embarrassing lengths to attract his attention. They went to even greater lengths to hold him. The reflection was of cold comfort to her.

Women were leisure-time toys for Travis Carson. Easily lifted, just as easily cast aside and dismissed. On the rise to the top, Travis had never allowed himself to waste an ounce of his single-minded energy on a woman. Women had their place in his life... of course they did. He was a very highly sexed male animal. But a woman never held the foreground in his mind, never came between him and his cold, analytical intelligence.

“I have to be going,” she said again and yet, when she collided with that gleaming gaze, she was strangely reluctant to move.

“As you wish.”

With disorientating cool, he watched her gather up her bag and climb out of the car on rubbery legs, teetering dangerously for an instant on the very high heels she always wore.

Dragging wayward eyes from his dark, virile features, she closed the door and crossed the street. She felt dizzy, shell-shocked. All those lies, she thought guiltily; all those lies to protect Daniel. Not that Travis could be a threat to Daniel now, but she felt safer with Travis in ignorance. Travis didn't like complications or potential embarrassments. An illegitimate son would qualify as both.

A little dazedly, she shook her head. Apart from that one moment of danger, Travis had been so... so cool. She couldn't say what she had expected, only somehow it hadn't been that. In the car, she could have sworn that Travis was blazingly angry. Obviously that had been her imagination. After all, why should he be angry? Six years was a long time, she reminded herself. And he hadn't cared about her. You didn't constantly remind someone you cared about that they were living on borrowed time. At least, not in Freya’s opinion you didn't.

____________

That evening when the doorbell rang Freya looked up from washing the dinner things in the sink. Daniel was watching TV in his room. The TV was a bit too loud, she observed, and made a mental note to check it out soon.

The doorbell rang again. She was tempted to ignore it, but unfortunately, whoever was pressing the bell was persistent, and her nerves wouldn't sit through a third shrill burst.

As she went to answer it she assured herself it was probably just Donna, the housekeeper, who had forgotten her keys to the house again. But when she opened the door on the dusky late evening it wasn’t Donna, who stood at five foot two inches in heels. It was someone over a foot taller and infinitely more masculine.

Travis Carson.

For a count of ten nail-biting seconds, Freya pbelieved she was hallucinating. As she fell back, her hand slid weakly from the door. “Travis...?” she whispered.

Suspended in time, Freya seemed to be able to take in details almost dispassionately. Faded jeans. Leather jacket. Thick dark brown hair which still had a tendency to curl a little too much over his collar. The high forehead. The deep-set startling green eyes. The patrician bump of his nose, giving him that indelible air of arrogance. The stunning bone structure and that golden olive skin. And his mouth. That gorgeous, sculpted-for-wicked-things mouth. It always looked on the verge of tipping into a sexy half-smile, full of the promise of sensual nirvana. Unless it was pulled into a grim line, as it had been when she had seen him last.

Reality slammed into Freya like a fist to her gut. She actually sucked in a breath, only realising then that she’d been starving her lungs for long seconds while she gawped at him like a groupie.

“Freya,” His voice lodged her even more firmly in reality. And the burning intensity of his green eyes as they swept down her body.

Freya became acutely aware of her outfit of skinny jeans, thick socks and a very worn plaid shirt. Her hair was scraped up into a bun and she wore no make-up.

“I see you haven't made it back to wherever you said you lived,” Magnificent golden eyes clashed with startled blue. “You didn't seem too sure where you lived. And you're a lousy liar, Freya. In fact, you're so poor a liar, I marvel that you even attempted to deceive me. Yet you sat in that car and you lied and lied and lied…”