Fire Beneath the Ice

Can I, Mummy? Can I?"

"This is Hannah." She looked at Wolf warily over her daughter's head and surprised a look in his eyes that she couldn't quite fathom.

Pain? Distress? Bitterness? Dislike? But then a shutter slid into place and the remote, cool gaze was the one she knew.

"Hannah, this is Mr. Strade."

"How do you do, Hannah?" he asked gravely, a smile touching the hard features briefly.

"Lo." Hannah smiled back,-as she twisted round in Lydia's arms for a better view.

"My mummy works for you, doesn't she?"

"Indeed she does." He moved towards the car as he spoke, clearly not wishing to prolong the moment, for which Lydia was extremely thankful. The weight of her lie had suddenly become like a noose round her neck.

"Do you like kittens?" Hannah was speaking directly to Wolf, who paused with his hand on the car door.

"They're little cats," she added helpfully.

"Hannah, Mr. Strade has got to go," Lydia said hastily as her mother appeared in the lighted doorway to the house. This was fast becoming too much.

"Yes, I like kittens." He looked at Hannah as Lydia held her close, their two heads touching as Hannah snuggled down in her mother's arms, and then raised a casual hand to the figure in the doorway before sliding into the

interior of the car and starting the engine in the same movement.

"I like him." As the car moved smoothly away Hannah waved vigorously, but the dark figure in the driving seat didn't respond.

"He's nice."

"How do you know?" Lydia's mother asked smilingly as she joined them in the street, sharing a glance of amusement with Lydia over Hannah's head as they watched the tail-lights of the car disappear.

"You've only said hello to him."

"He likes kittens." That, as far as Hannah was concerned, was the end of the matter.

"And Mummy likes him, don't you. Mummy?"

Lydia smiled weakly.

"What's all this about Mrs. Thomson and a kitten?" The diversion worked, but later that night, as she lay in bed with sleep a million miles away, Hannah's words came back to haunt her. Did she like him? She pictured the hard, handsome face and powerfully masculine body and a little shiver trickled down her spine, sensitising a hundred nerve-ends she had never known she had.

"Like' was not a word that applied to Wolf Strade somehow. One 'liked' neighbours or friends or the family doctor, but Wolf... She twisted in the big bed irritably. What on earth was she thinking about him for, anyway? He was her boss, that was all, a multimillionaire whose lifestyle was so at variance with hers they could have been on different planets. But he had wanted her... The thought was there before she could stop it and she sat up in bed jerkily, her face stricken.

"Oh, no, none of that, Lydia." Her voice as she spoke into the dark room was tightly emphatic.

"You work for him, that's all, and the only reason he took you on in the first place was because he thought you were married _and immune from any fancy ideas. Women chase him all the time, you know that, for goodness' sake." But he had wanted her, the voice in her mind taunted quietly. She had read it in his eyes. It wouldn't mean a thing to a man like him, she answered silently, not a thing.

In spite of the desire that had flared between them so swiftly, the wild hunger she had seen in his face, he had been able to push her aside without a qualm, although he must have sensed her surrender.

Sensed it and shown his disgust at it too, the inexorable voice reminded her relentlessly. She groaned softly, the sound a little lost whimper in the emptiness of the silent room.

The next day was a Friday, and painful in the extreme as Lydia struggled to maintain a cool, efficient image while shrivelling up inside every time she glanced at Wolfs dark countenance, but after a normal family weekend Monday was easier and Tuesday more so. Wolf was his normal arrogant cold self, his blue eyes cool and remote if they caught hers, and gradually the incident in the lift became a little less stark as day followed hectic day. Once or twice she thought she caught him staring at her with an odd expression in the darkly lashed blue eyes, but his manner would change so swiftly when he caught her gaze that she told herself she was imagining things.

And she had noticed he went to great pains not to touch her, even in the most abstract way, but then, he wasn't a physical man, she told herself uneasily. was he? Matthew hadn't been. She shook her head mentally at her naivete where men were concerned, but then she had only ever known Matthew. The normal scenario of boy meets girl, the inevitable experimentation of life and love, had completely passed her by.

And she knew absolutely nothing about Wolf. This _fact was brought home forcibly on the day Hannah was to collect the kitten from Mrs. Thomson, it now having reached the requisite age of eight weeks. She had arranged to leave an hour early in order to pick Hannah up herself from nursery, and was just finishing the final pages of a complex financial report when a cursory knock at her outer door interrupted her train of thought.

"Yes?" The door had opened even as she spoke and a heavy gust of expensive perfume drew her head upwards.