Long Cold Winter

At one point while the two men were discussing business, Sally leaned across the table and said enviously to Autumn, ‘I love your outfit. Every other woman in the place is longing to scratch your eyes out and all the men are wondering what you’re like in bed.’

Autumn felt the colour burn up under her skin. Normally Sally’s forthright manner didn’t bother her, but on this occasion her eyes slid automatically to Yorke, her tongue wetting her top lip in nervous dread.

‘Yes, what are you like, Autumn?’ Yorke mocked softly. ‘It’s so long that I’ve practically forgotten.’

‘You’d find me very disappointing.’ Autumn stared at him, deliberately holding his eyes and then letting her own drop as obviously over his body as his glance did over hers. She had found it to be quite an effective ploy in the past. Men might say that they were all in favour of equal rights, but they still thought some rights belonged to them alone.

Yorke wasn’t the slightest bit abashed; indeed he returned her look with deliberately insulting thoroughness, and Autumn, who had seen forty-year-olds flustered under the look she had given him, knew that he had turned the tables on her. She turned away, ostensibly to speak to Alan, but in reality to give herself an opportunity to recharge her emotional batteries.

Merely being in the same room as Yorke drained her of energy; he was like a force-field, destroying everything that threatened his own supremacy.

André, the chef, had surpassed himself with the food, but Autumn was barely aware of what they ate. Other couples drifted on to the dance floor and she found her stomach muscles contracting in nervous dread. She could not dance with Yorke. She could not bear to be held close to him; the mere thought was enough to make her feel physically sick.

At her side she could feel Alan watching Yorke anxiously. Worrying about the future of the island, no doubt, but when he asked her to dance with him she hadn’t the heart to refuse.

The steel band were good and Autumn had danced with Alan often enough for them to make a well matched couple. The small dance floor was quite crowded, and they were on the far side of the room from their table, and yet the moment Yorke and Sally joined them Autumn was unbearably aware of their presence, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickling warningly.

When the music slowed to a more romantic beat, Autumn suggested to Alan that they sit down.

‘Still not forgiven me, have you?’ he asked wryly, his hand on the small of her back as they went back to their table. ‘I honestly didn’t have any choice. Do you think if I hadn’t agreed it would have prevented him from coming out here? He’s a man who’s used to getting his own way, Autumn.’

‘You could have warned me,’ she replied evenly. ‘I’m leaving Travel Mates, Alan. I can’t stay on after this.’

He cursed and then fell silent, glancing across the small distance that separated them from Yorke and Sally, dancing close together.

Once to see him hold another girl like that would have brought a physical pain so acute that it would have hurt, Autumn reflected, watching them. Now she felt nothing. Her feelings were in cold storage, and that was how she intended them to stay.

The music stopped and Sally and Yorke broke apart. As though they were communicating by telepathy Autumn knew that that dance had just been his opening gambit; that he was stalking her, deliberately trying to instil the weakening fear that had once made her his willing victim.

Snatching up her bag, she told Alan she was going to the cloakroom. Once there she reapplied her lip-gloss and combed her hair, sitting sightlessly in front of the mirror. When the door opened she froze, but it was only Sally, her eyes concerned.

‘Are you all right?’

‘As all right as anyone can be after being confronted by a piece of their past they thought well and truly buried,’ Autumn responded.

Sally’s smile was wryly appreciative. ‘And what a past!’

‘If you’d been married to him you wouldn’t have let him out of your sight, is that what you’re going to say?’

Sally heard the bitterness and shook her head. ‘Autumn, you and I have been friends long enough for me to know the sort of person you are. I admit that Yorke isn’t exactly what I pictured when you talked about your husband. He’s far more mind-blowing; but anyone but a fool can tell with just one look that he’s pure steel. Fun to play with as long as it’s just a game, but I’d hate to have him for my enemy, and it was a pretty rotten trick for Alan to play, unleashing him on you like that without any warning. Yorke’s idea, I suppose?’

Autumn nodded her head.

‘It seems that Yorke threatened to destroy Travel Mates if Alan didn’t help him.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Leave here just as soon as I can. I don’t know what Yorke wants, and I don’t care. There’s only one thing I want from him—a divorce!’

‘Look, would you like me to stay with you tonight?’ Sally suggested sympathetically.

Autumn smiled briefly. ‘No, thanks, but it was a kind thought.’

As she slipped out into the darkness she drew in gulps of fresh air, her mind busily planning her escape. Tomorrow she had to go with the sailing trip round the island, but there was a flight to London from St Lucia, the day after, and with any luck she could be on it. Beyond her arrival in London she refused to think. Every instinct she possessed was overwhelming her with the need to put as great a distance between herself and Yorke as she could.

CHAPTER TWO (#u34c18bcf-d1a4-5bb0-bf6f-f4e8f199d8e0)

WHEN she left the restaurant, Autumn didn’t immediately return to her bungalow. Instead she walked along the beach, carrying her flimsy sandals in one hand as she felt the sea-washed firmness of the sand beneath her feet. Tonight she felt a deep longing to give herself up to the vastness of the sea; to be swamped by its embrace, and be swept effortlessly into an unending void where all feeling ceased to exist. It would be so easy to walk into the sea now and keep on walking, and she had to fight against the urge to do so.

Turning her back on the sea, she walked determinedly towards her bungalow, inserting her key in the lock and opening the door.

Once inside she stiffened like a wary cat, sensing danger. Tobacco smoke drifted across the darkened room, but even before the familiar scent reached her, she knew who it was who stood in the shadows by the window.

He crossed the room before she could react, grasping her arm and pulling her towards him, locking the door behind her and pocketing the key with one swift, lithe movement.

‘Still so predictable,’ he mocked. ‘Never fight when you can run.’

‘I wasn’t running, Yorke,’ Autumn told him, shrugging dismissively. ‘If you must know, I was tired. I’ve had a long day and now I want to go to bed.’

It was a tactical mistake and she was annoyed with herself for making it. Yorke’s eyes gleamed silver-green in the darkness; the colour of the sea. Cat’s eyes, watching; waiting eyes.

‘So do I,’ he drawled mockingly.

‘I meant alone,’ Autumn told him without bothering to disguise her withdrawal. ‘I find I prefer it that way, especially in this climate.’ She dropped her shoes on the floor, sliding them on as though the increased inches gave her increased protection, but even so, the top of her head barely reached Yorke’s chin. She knew with a swift stab of satisfaction that her response had surprised him, even though he disguised it. The old Autumn would have been angry and defensive, backing away from him and defying him to touch her.

‘You’ve had experience, then?’ Yorke asked her silkily. ‘But not with friend Alan. You’ve never taken him to your bed, have you, Autumn?’

‘I don’t really think that’s any of your business,’ Autumn replied coolly, reaching up to switch on the light. ‘Do you?’

She felt his indrawn breath, knowing without looking at him that he was angry. So she had pierced his guard. Good! Always in their past encounters he had driven her into a corner, defeating her with his logic and hard determination. Then she had lacked the weapons to fight him, a loser by virtue of her love for him. Now it was different.

‘Have you slept with him?’ Yorke demanded angrily, catching hold of her wrist with sudden violence.

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

Autumn was reasonably sure that he would do no such thing, and her success went to her head. It was going to be easier than she had thought. She had allowed her imagination to build Yorke into a more formidable adversary than he actually was, forgetting that during the intervening years she had grown from an inexperienced adolescent, young for her years, into a woman.

‘Please give me my key and leave,’ she demanded coldly. ‘I have an early start in the morning.’

‘That cold, dismissive manner might work with other men,’ Yorke snarled at her, tightening his grip of her wrist, ‘but it doesn’t work with me, Autumn. I know too well what lies under that ice-cold exterior, and I haven’t followed you half way across the world to be dismissed and frozen out. Besides…’ his voice dropped huskily, his eyes wandering over in insolent appraisal, until she felt her lungs would burst with the effort of maintaining her slow even breathing, ‘we both know that the ice is just a façade, don’t we?’

‘What do you want? I’m not in the mood for games, Yorke. Just say your piece and then go.’

His eyes darkened and for a moment Autumn felt the unleashed power of the anger her dismissal had aroused, and she knew that she had not overestimated the danger he represented—far from it. And then he was smiling mockingly, his eyes cruel, as his thumb circled the soft inner flesh of her wrist with insidious determination.

‘I want you, Autumn,’ he said softly.

Once long ago that soft caress would have been sufficient to drive her into his arms, begging brokenly for the satisfaction only his lovemaking could bring, but now, after one deep, shuddering breath, she had herself under control, her eyes empty of everything but distaste as she stared at him.