‘How convenient.’ Kieron had his back to her, his dark head bent over some papers, ‘Tell me, Briony, did you bring anything of Beth with you, when you decided to trade personalities?’
‘Not a thing,’ Briony assured him shortly. Why was he plaguing her with these questions, resurrecting memories she would rather had remained forgotten?
‘That’s a pity. At least she was a warm, living, breathing woman.’
‘Who you destroyed!’
The words were out before she could stop them, and Kieron’s eyes narrowed sharply as he swung round and stared at her.
‘What makes you say that?’
Sheer disbelief held her rigidly silent. How could he stand there and ask her that? Hadn’t he deliberately and coldbloodedly used her, and then when he had got his story, simply dropped her? He knew how she had felt about him—she had never made the slightest attempt to hide it. He was an intelligent man; he must have known how she would react, how shocked and distressed she would be. She had learned from a photographer who had worked with him, and whom she had bumped into by accident three months after he had left, that his career was flourishing. He had been posted abroad somewhere, although where the photographer had not said.
‘So, nothing of the Beth I knew remains?’ Kieron persisted.
He was watching her intently and Briony felt like a helpless little fly being pursued by a particularly relentless spider. What did he want? An admission of how close he had come to completely destroying her, to gloat over?
‘Nothing,’ she told him emotionlessly.
His anger seemed to explode over her.
‘Don’t lie to me, Briony!’ he gritted furiously, ‘I saw your face when you walked into that office and saw me sitting there. You hate my guts, don’t you. Don’t you?’ he demanded when she refused to answer.
‘Haven’t I the right?’ Her hands were curled into two small fists. ‘After what you did.…’
For a long moment he said nothing, merely watching her in a way that made Briony shiver with apprehension. Why should he examine her with such contempt? He was the one at fault. He was the one who….
‘You’re quite right,’ he said softly, cutting across her bitter thoughts. ‘The Beth I knew has gone completely. You’re quite a woman, aren’t you, Briony? A woman of iron and steel, according to the office grapevine. The Beth I knew would never have held on to a grudge so tightly, nor become so bitter. But then the Beth I thought I knew never.…’ He broke off and without warning leaned over her, watching her eyes spit defiance. It was only when he kept on coming, and Briony eventually shrank back, that she thought she saw some emotion flicker deep in the narrowed eyes, but it was gone almost instantly, his expression withdrawn as he said curtly, ‘You’re perfectly safe. You’ve made your point, but I don’t intend working with a secretary who looks at me as though I’ve crawled out from under a particularly slimy stone. So if I were you I’d have another look at this.’ He dropped the directory he had removed from the shelf behind her on to her desk with a derisive smile, and started to walk towards the door.
‘One thing at least hasn’t changed,’ he said unkindly, pausing to watch the wary expression creep into her eyes. ‘At least not if all the gossip one hears is correct. It seems you still enjoy turning men on and then freezing them off. With one notable exception.’
Briony gasped at the unfairness of the accusation, and the cynical, twisted smile which had accompanied his last words, and was just about to demand an explanation when Kieron added acidly:
‘You’ve made how you feel about me quite plain, Briony. You hate and loathe me, right?’
When she didn’t comment, he breathed out sharply, anger etched deep in his face.
‘God, you must want to keep this job very badly!’
‘Very badly,’ Briony agreed coolly, hoping that her voice wouldn’t betray anything that she was feeling. How on earth she was going to work for Kieron and keep her sanity she did not know, but work for him she must.
‘So that you can be with Matt?’
Before Briony could get over the shock of the accusation, Kieron was saying with bitter contempt, ‘Is that what your taste runs to these days? He’s not a man, he’s a babe in arms!’
Briony went white, but Kieron had already turned away. She fumbled for a piece of paper and put it in her typewriter, her fingers rattling over the keys in an even staccato rhythm, but the typewritten words were blurred by a mist of tears she was powerless to control.
CHAPTER TWO
IT was after seven when Briony stepped wearily off the bus at the end of her road. There had been a last-minute panic necessitating recall of an article and she had worked late to help Doug get the crisis sorted out. The adrenalin flow which had helped her through the day had abated, leaving her feeling drained and exhausted. Her feet dragged as she walked up the tree-lined avenue. It had been a perfect spring day, and now as long golden shadows fell across the pavement the last liquid notes of birdsong filtered sweetly through the air.
She had a long way to commute, but she had particularly wanted a house with at least some pretensions towards being rural. She knew North London wasn’t fashionable and people raised their eyebrows when they discovered how far out of town she was, but the house had a long back garden, which was enclosed with hedges and boasted half a dozen wizened apple trees, and in the spring when they were in blossom and the cherry trees flowered along the surburban pavements she could almost convince herself it was as good as the country.
She had bought the house three years ago, a necessity rather than a luxury, and as well as realising her modest investments she had had to take on a seemingly huge mortgage. House prices had soared since the sale of her parents’ old home, especially in London, and she had been desperate when she found this house. Split into two self-contained flats, it was ideal for what she needed and she occupied the lower flat, the upper being let to an Italian couple who were living in England on a temporary basis. They had a baby girl and Briony got on very well with them, especially Gina, who was her own age and very much on her wavelength.
Gina was waiting for her when she opened the front door, and her heart instantly started to pound with fear, her mouth dry with dread.
‘Has.…’