What a fool she had been on the point of making herself about him. As though a man with a nature like his could ever really change. Yet he had persuaded her that he had. In her heart she knew that she had forgiven him for the past. If he had asked her to go away with him for the weekend she would have. And she would have told herself that it was to carry out her plan to be avenged on him. Up to the last moment she would have toyed with the idea of telling him the truth about what he had done to her, then leaving him flat. But she wouldn't have done it. Instead, she would have let him make love to her again. She knew that she wouldn't have been able to help herself, because she would have wanted him, and wanted him more than any man she had ever known.

But that was not going to happen now. Once again he had unfurled his true colours. That would give her the strength to resist any future temptation to become his plaything. She was not going to let him break her heart. When he turned up on Monday full of blarney and apparent contrition, she would tell him that she meant to have no more to do with him. He could run his hand through that dark curly hair of his, that looked like a wet poodle's, until he rubbed it off, for all she cared. She was finished with him, and for good. All the same, it was better to stop thinking of him.

Lazily she stretched herself. She wished that she could lie there in the warm scented bed for ever. But not alone. She wanted someone to share it whom she could laugh with and be cuddled by. If only some dark, handsome stranger would walk into the room now, she knew that she would welcome him. Just a pretence of fright and shyness perhaps. But no more. A little persuading, then strong arms round her that she could almost feel as she thought of them; then long luscious kisses and once again the swoon of pleasure that she had for a long while been denied.