Seductive Stranger

'Yes, of course. They've been there for years, they don't do any harm.'

Josh looked mockingly at Prue. 'So you were scared?'

'Of course not,' she said in a crisp voice. 'Just startled.'

Someone else appeared in the doorway; Prue recognised Mrs Killane at once, even though her jet hair was silvered and her slender body had become more rounded with age. Her face seemed quite unlined, her beauty as breathtaking as ever. While Prue stared, James Allardyce moved towards her, and she held out a hand.

'Jim!'

'You look very charming tonight, Lucy,' he murmured in a warm voice, holding her hand while he stared down at her, and Prue felt her own face harden, her mouth become a tight, cold line. They didn't talk to each other like old friends; it was far more than that. She had felt that she would know if they were lovers, and she did. Her mother hadn't been crazy or neurotic; she had been right all along.

'Aren't you coming in?' Josh asked coldly, and she started, giving him a look from under her lashes. He was watching her with enmity; she lifted her lashes and looked back in the same hostile way.

'I suppose so.'

His frown darkened his face. 'What the hell is the matter with you?

Are you going to be touchy al evening? Why did you come, if you were in one of your moods?'

'I'm not in one of my moods!' she muttered. 'I don't know what you mean—one of my moods! What moods? You only met me the other day, what do you know about my moods? Anyway, I don't have moods. I'm a very even-tempered person, normally. If I've been touchy when you're around, it's been your fault.'

He laughed furiously. 'Oh, of course, it would be! I've met women like you before. I recognise the attitude. Nothing is ever your fault, is it? Someone else is always to blame—usually some poor bloody man!'

'Don't you swear at me!' said Prue, teeth tight with rage.

'You call that swearing? You've led a sheltered life!'

'And don't sneer,' said Prue.

'For heaven's sake!' he ground out, his face reddening with fury.

'Don't snarl, either,' she said with a peculiar satisfaction in the sight of his temper rising.

He gave a thick, wordless exclamation and grabbed her arm, shaking her. 'Now listen!' he burst out, without saying precisely what she was to listen to!

Prue tried to look as calm as a cucumber. That wasn't how she felt, of course; she was as angry as he was, if for different reasons. Deep inside her she knew that she had deliberately pushed him into this ferocious temper. She wasn't sure why, but she had been possessed of terrible energy and had needed to release it by quarrelling with someone—or, she thought, in a horrified admission just to herself, by making passionate love. Of the two alternatives, given that Josh Killane was the only man around at the moment, quarrelling seemed the wiser choice.

'Get your hands off me!' She glanced past him at the door, in the hope of rescue, but her father and Lucy Killane had vanished.

Josh looked back, too, and Prue took the opportunity to wrench herself free and dart towards the doorway. He caught up with her a few feet from the house; spun her round to face him again.

'Don't you . . .' she began, but he interrupted.

'Will you stop giving me orders? I don't like bossy women.'

'I don't care what you don't like!' she began, then his hands closed over her shoulders and lifted her up until they were face to face. Prue was startled to find herself looking into his violent, dark eyes, and for a moment she was too breathless to speak. Josh kissed her; an angry kiss which forced her lips back on her teeth and suffocated her. She shut her eyes in shock, felt his mouth crushed down against hers briefly, then she was back on the ground, on her own two- feet, but reeling like a drunk.

'And don't tell me! I know!' he said. 'I mustn't kiss you.'

She didn't have to answer, because while she was trying to find the words to tell him exactly what she thought of him, her father appeared in the doorway and called to them,

'Aren't you two coming in? It's cold out there,'

'Coming,' Prue said in a thin voice, walking towards him fast, and Josh followed more slowly. She looked around her as she entered the high-ceilinged hall; it was unfamiliar. She must have been; here as a child, but she did not recall it. Tonight, there was a log fire burning in the large stone fireplace, and great bronze vases of autumn flowers on either side of the hearth. Lucy Killane stood by a Georgian table, pouring drinks.

'You remember Mrs Killane, Prue,' James Allardyce said, introducing them, and Prue held out her hand politely, with an effort she hoped she hid.

'Of course. Hello, Mrs Killane.'