'Witnesses, you mean!' Sian sneered. He yanked the car door open and pushed her into the front passenger seat as if she were a rag doll. As she sprawled there, limp and shaking with rage, he slammed the door and strode round to get in beside her. 'You don't want witnesses, do you?' she accused, and he stared fixedly at her. 'Just as there were no witnesses when you forced my car off the road,' Sian burst out, alarmed by his expression. Those bright, furious eyes were full of threat, but he started the engine and drove off without trying to answer her. She should, perhaps, have held her tongue then. It might have been wiser, not to say safer, but she was in a reckless mood and full of hurt resentment.
'Why did you do it? I thought it was just bad driving at first; you didn't care if I skidded off the road or not! But it was more than that, I think, wasn't it? Otherwise you'd have stopped to make sure I wasn't badly hurt, but you put your foot down and shot away before anyone could get your number. You meant to force me off the road.' She was thinking aloud, rather than actually accusing him. The idea had only just occurred to her, and one part of her mind still didn't believe it. Cass wasn't the murderous type. Or was he?
'You were trying to hurt me,' she said slowly, going white. 'My God, you were trying to kill me!'
CHAPTER EIGHT
'You're hysterical!' said Cass curtly, his foot down on the accelerator and the car hurtling along at around eighty miles an hour now that they were outside the built-up area s
urrounding the hospital.
'I'm nothing of the kind! I'm just furious!' snapped Sian, a nervous eye on the speedometer. 'And stop driving so damn fast!'
Hedges flashed by, green meadows were a blur of colour, she saw other drivers staring open-mouthed as they passed them, but Cass didn't slow down for quite a few moments.
'You can't believe anyone tried to kill you! Why should they?' he muttered, and there was something odd in his voice; his face was drawn and frowning. Sian hadn't been talking rationally, she had been using her instincts, and she used them now, watching him and still incredulous over the idea that Cass might have been the driver who forced her off the road and then drove away without stopping.
'Was it you?' she asked huskily, wanting him to deny it, eager to believe him if he said it wasn't true.
He didn't answer, though. He shot her a look and then stared back at the road, brows knit.
Her stomach sank and she felt her eyes burning, as if she was about to cry, but she wouldn't cry over him. She clenched her teeth and fixedly regarded the landscape through which they were driving. It was so calm and tranquil; Sian wished she felt like that, but her mood was stormy and she contrarily wished the weather matched it.
Cass suddenly turned off the road and parked in a leafy lay-by behind which ran a little wood of oak and beech and hazel trees.
Sian shrank back against the seat as he turned to face her. 'Why have you stopped? Start the car. I want to get back.'
'Not until we've talked this out!'
'What is there to talk about? The only talking I should do is to the police!' She gave him an angry smile. 'Don't look so worried—I'm not going to tell them, but I've a damn good mind to put the whole story in the paper!'
'You'll be risking a legal action if you do,' he threatened, his brows black and menacing.
'You wouldn't dare! You know it happened, and if you take legal proceedings that will only prove I'm telling the truth.'
'You think you are, you mean!' he said in furious irony.
'Oh, now you're going to say I imagined it all, I suppose?'
'No, but you're imagining a hell of a lot! Sian, you're intelligent…'
'Thank you! Am I supposed to be flattered enough to forgive and forget?'
'Will you let me finish?' he suddenly shouted, and she jumped, nerves on edge, then glared resentfully at him.
'Don't you shout at me! Who do you think you are?'
'Will you listen for one minute?' He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, and she went into panic. Pulling free, she turned and opened the car door, almost falling out. She didn't wait to see how Cass took that. She started to run, out of the lay-by, into the nearest cover, which happened to be the little wood whose trees crowded the roadside. Sian crashed through the close-set branches, leaves brushing her face, brambles clutching at her clothes, scratching her legs.
Behind her, she heard the slam of the driver's door and the running thud of feet which meant Cass was pursuing her. She was in such a state of wild tension that she almost sobbed, her breathing thick and tortured. Running faster, she dived deeper into the shadowy woodland, through green ferns, the dappled light from above flickering all around her and making her head ache.
Cass caught up with her in a little hollow full of towering beech, the earth beneath them deep with leaf-mould from years of autumn falls. Sian felt his hands descend on her arms and struggled, shaking, until he spun her to face him, and as she looked up at him, breathlessly protesting, he bent his head and took her mouth with bruising force.
She could have struggled, but she didn't. She was so angry that she met the kiss on tiptoe, her mouth as full of fury as his. They kissed in an act of war, then his arms went round her and held her punishingly tightly, and her arms went round his neck and her hands closed on his hair, winding it round her fingers, pulling it, clutching it ruthlessly. Her rage burned out on his lips, and she winced at the consuming violence of his hands as they roved over her, but when at last their mouths parted in sheer exhaustion, she was breathing as if she had run a marathon, and Cass almost staggered back until he could lean against a beech trunk, still holding her, like a man rescuing a drowning victim who is himself almost dead when he crawls on to dry land.
They looked at each other dazedly.
'Damn you!' Sian whispered with her last scrap of energy.