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stammering state of utter confusion. He looked down and idly picked up the fountain pen lying on his desk. Despite the advance of technology, he still used a fountain pen for writing letters and signing his name on documents. He twirled it slowly between his fingers now, making sure that he didn’t look at her. She seemed to go to pieces whenever he looked at her, something she had never done before. Then again, she had probably never been repelled by him before.
    â€˜Have you ever drowned your sorrows, Lucy? Drunktoo much for your own good? Behaved like a complete fool with no regard for the consequences?’
    Of course, in retrospect, he would consider himself a fool to have made love with her, she thought with a burning sense of shame and hurt. This conversation would have been totally different if she had been beautiful and sophisticated. In fact, it probably wouldn’t have been taking place at all. ‘I did get drunk once when I was eighteen but I had such a bad hangover that I never did it again. And, no, I have never had to drown my sorrows in drink. But of course, as I said…’
    â€˜What a blameless life you must lead,’ Nick mused, half to himself. Of course, it was written on her face, a fresh innocence that he had blasted his way into like a maniac. For the first time he wondered what her outside life was like. It had never occurred to him before, but then he had been so wrapped up in his own personal domestic nightmare that he had spent very little time actually noticing the people around them. He moved through them, did deals, went to meetings and functioned in a way that had been utterly detached from any curiosity.
    Oddly, he found himself sidetracked by questions that had nothing to do with why he had called her into his office.
    â€˜What do you do out of work?’ he asked suddenly and Lucy looked at him in surprise.
    â€˜What do I do out of work? What do you mean?’
    â€˜Do you go out much? Do you share a house with other people? Is that why you decided to come to the office on Friday? Because you couldn’t face your house-mates?’ She hadn’t been a virgin, he thought suddenly. He had another vivid image of her lying on him, her breasts swinging above his face as she moved, her slightbody grinding against his hard, pulsing masculinity. His body stirred in response and he clenched his jaw at the intrusive thoughts.
    â€˜No, no, I don’t share a house. In fact, I have my own flat. In a renovated Victorian house that’s been converted into ten flats. It’s not in the best part of London, but it does.’
    â€˜And do you go out much?’
    â€˜I have a normal social life,’ Lucy informed him, tilting her chin up defensively. It would have been a hell of a lot more normal if she hadn’t spent precious time hankering after the man facing her. She cringed at the thought that he might ever find out that little fact. She, at least, had not once uttered a word about how disastrously attracted she had always been by him. She had not allowed her short-sighted passion to guide her words. And he would never find out.
    â€˜I go to the movies with friends, go to the theatre now and again, have meals out…’
    â€˜With men?’ he asked smoothly, picking up on her list of hobbies and tacking on what purported to be a natural follow-on question.
    â€˜Sometimes.’
    â€˜And do you have a lover?’ It was an outrageously interfering question, he thought to himself, but curiosity had got the better of him. Sex with her had been good. Better than good. Or so it seemed to him in hazy retrospect. But her demure appearance belied any such suggestion.
    Yes, you, once in reality but a thousand times in my head. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ Lucy said, half-shocked by the directness of her statement.
    â€˜You are quite right,’ Nick said soothingly. ‘I am perfectly sure that if you had