Mistress of Deception

The old dream she'd once had of becoming a kindergarten teacher came back with a rush. And so did the tears. It was just as well the shoot was over. She scrambled down from the car, wanting nothing more than to get away from here as quickly as possible.

'What's up, honey?' the photographer said kindly as he wrapped a blanket around her. 'Are you sick or something?'

She shook her head in abject misery, swallowing madly as she battled to keep the tears at bay.

'You're tired and cold.' He patted her hand. 'Tomorrow will be better. We're shooting the evening stuff inside the Opera House. Now you go and get

changed, then go home and get a good night's sleep. Can't have our beautiful Ebony looking all wan and pasty, can we?'

Ebony was only too glad to escape and hide herself in the caravan. Or she would have been glad... if the caravan had been empty.

Alan was sitting on the built-in divan, underneath a window that overlooked the beach and would have given him a clear view of the Porsche.

'So it was you watching me!' she accused, her face flaming at the thought that what he'd seen would have only confirmed his opinion of her character. She was a Jezebel, happy to flaunt her body for other men's eyes, turning herself on for the camera as swiftly and easily as she'd always appeared to turn herself on for him.

'Shut the door, Ebony,' he said curtly.

'No. I want you to get out. I told you I don't want to have anything

more to do with you, and I meant it. Clear out! Find some other cheap little

tart to satisfy your needs, because it's not going to be me!' Too late she

realised that sounded as if she categorised herself a cheap little tart as well.

'I don't want some other cheap little tart,' he said, and, unfolding himself, he stood up, striding over to remove her clenched hand from the knob, and shut the door himself. She glared up into his coldly handsome face with its hard blue eyes and thin, cruel lips, then did something she neither planned nor consciously decided to do.

She slapped him, the wild swing of her arm causing the blanket to slip from her shoulders and fall on to the floor. She stood there, half naked, shaking with emotion and trepidation, waiting for Alan to slap her back. Or worse.

But he didn't make a move to touch her, merely arched an eyebrow and absently rubbed the red mark on his cheek. 'I guess I deserved that,' he said, and bent to pick up the blanket.

'W...what?'

'I said I deserved to be slapped.' And he draped the blanket back around her shoulder.

Clutching it to her chest, she frowned up at this strangely meek and mild Alan. He didn't ring true.

'What's going on here?' she demanded agitatedly. 'Is this some new type of game, Alan?'

'Games were never my style, Ebony,' he said drily. 'I learnt them from you.'

A guilty heat zoomed into her face.

Ebony conceded there was a lot of truth in that statement. Not that she'd deliberately set out to turn their affair into a series of dark encounters. She'd reacted badly, however, to Alan's insistence that his relationship with her be a secret. Did he honestly think she hadn't noticed how much he hated himself for wanting her as he did? It had made her perversely determined to make him want her even more. So she'd fulfilled every sexual fantasy a man could ever have. And exulted in every moment of it.

Till afterwards...

Afterwards, she'd always been consumed with shame. It was consuming her now.

'No more, Alan,' she moaned softly. 'No more...' Her head drooped and her shoulders started to shake.

What happened then astounded her.

Alan actually drew her weeping self down on to the divan with him, cradling her gently against his chest and stroking her hair till the sobs subsided.

'There won't be any more,' he said at last. 'I can't take any more either. Let's start again, Ebony. Let's put the past behind us. No more hiding, no more secrets. We'll go out together in public like a normal couple, do things together, go for weekends away together. Would you like that?'

Would she like that? Oh, God...

'You.. .you want us to be open about our affair?'

'No, I want us to start a new one, a different one.'

'A different one...' She blinked several times. 'In what way will it be different?'

'In the ways I've just described. And others. Well, what do you say, Ebony?'