Crescendo

'Have you ever thought of anything but yourself?' Marina asked Gideon bitterly, walking away from him into the kitchen. The air was filled with the fragrance of freshly prepared salad. A large bowl of it stood on the kitchen table, which was laid for lunch for three.

Gideon came up behind her as she stared at it. His voice spoke just at her ear, soft, smooth, inti­mate. 'I think of you, all the time. You know that.'

'Liar,' she said, not turning to look at him, but aware in every fibre of her being of the lean hard body just behind her.

'It's the truth. Do you know the old legend about a man who went to sleep under an olive tree and a

scorpion crawled into his ear and ate its way into his brain? That's what you did to me.' He sounded as though he were mocking her, his voice amused.

'If I were a scorpion I'd sting you to death.'

He laughed, running a finger down the centre of her spine, making her tingle with nervous elec­tricity. 'Vixen.'

'Grandie asked you to go. Why don't you?'

'You know why,' he murmured, kissing her arm.

Marina tugged it away irritably. Every touch made her head spin and she knew she had a very low resistance to Gideon's insidious lovemaking. She would despise herself if she gave way. She had to hang on to the things she knew about him, his arrogant use of women in the past, his admission that

when he was tired of them he pushed them away with a cold shrug.

He lounged beside her, arms folded, staring at her, and she refused to look at him, although with­out so much as glancing in his direction she was very well aware of him. Just outside the angle of her vision the dark head moved invitingly, drawing her, but she fought the depth of her own attraction to him.

'Where did you walk? Where did you meet that boy?'

Gideon had a note in his voice which she was be­ginning to recognise. He was very aware of the dif­ference in their ages, she realised, and resentful of it. He tried to put contempt and mockery into his voice whenever he used that phrase. He had always referred to Paul as 'that boy', she remembered.

Deliberately she turned and glanced at him.

'Tom is hardly a boy. I'd say he was around my own

age.'

'He looks about eighteen,' Gideon spat, his face hardening.

Keeping her eyes on his face, watching him closely, she said softly, 'Don't be absurd. You're just fifteen years older than him, that's all.'

His skin took on a dark red heat. After a pause during which she could see him fighting with his temper, he said thickly: 'Very funny.'

'I wasn't being funny.' She opened her eyes wide, all innocence, and he glared at her.

'No,' he said, 'you weren't.' There was another pause, then he moved closer and said huskily, 'Don't tease me, Marina. Don't you know how much I need you?'

'Need me?' She looked at him icily. 'Until the day you've had all you want from me and I get kicked out of your life like all the others, Gideon?'

'No, it isn't like that with you,' he protested. 'With you it was different almost from the start.'

'Was it?' she asked contemptuously. 'You told me yourself that when we met you wanted me, and we both know you didn't have marriage in mind, don't we?'

He flinched. 'No,' he admitted harshly. 'No. One look and I was burning for you and it never even entered my head to marry you.' He saw the anger in her face and said unsteadily, 'Darling, I'm being honest. At least do me the favour of listening to the whole thing. I can't deny the way it started and I don't want to hide anything from you, but it soon changed, Marina. Believe me.'

'Why should I believe a word you say? You've admitted to being a liar and an opportunist.'

'I'm not lying now,' he insisted. 'I admit I came down here in pursuit of you, meaning to seduce you, but that day changed everything.'

She shivered, remembering that clear, frosty winter day, her own excitement at seeing him, the way he smiled at her and said: 'Hello, Red Riding Hood, I'm the wolf.' How funny he must have thought that was—a hidden irony which he would have believed she could not glimpse. She had been so blindly innocent, a child walking into danger without even knowing it. Gideon had teased her, stroked her palm with his linger, kissed her lightly. He had been stealing up on her without haste, a stealthy predator whose intentions were hidden from her.

He felt her anger and moved restlessly, touching her arm. 'But I didn't go on with it, darling. I couldn't. Because while I was here you played to me and while I listened I suddenly saw what you were and I hated myself. You were a creature from a world I'd never known existed. You played with such sensitivity and sweetness, a beautiful tran­quillity. I listened and I hated myself. I walked out of here that day never meaning to see you again. I knew I had no right to touch you, any more than I would have a right to crush a flower.'