Long Cold Winter

She turned her back on him, fighting for self-control. They had played this scene so often before. Her defiant; him taunting, sure of her ultimate capitulation, which had always been forthcoming, but she was not going to allow her bitterness to give him victory now. The ardent passion which had once held her in thrall to him had been tamed and the searingly painful lessons his humiliation of her pride had inflicted upon her mind acted as a curb upon her senses. She felt like a laboratory mouse trained to react to light and heat, as the sensual softness of his voice reminded her of the bitter pain which had followed her abject surrender, freezing her emotions behind a wall of ice.

‘I’m not the floor show, Yorke,’ she said coldly. ‘I know you get a kick out of baiting me, but you aren’t going to get a reaction. Those days are gone, and I’m immune—you saw to that. Another two years and I’ll be free of you for good, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’

She hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and when his hands grasped her wrists, pulling her back against the hard male warmth of his body, she froze instantly.

‘So, you’re immune, are you?’ he whispered savagely, turning her towards him and imprisoning her against him, his mouth feathering tormentingly against her throat, reawakening aching memories of how she had once responded to that light caress.

Her mouth felt dry, every muscle tensed against his deliberate and calculated assault upon her senses. So many times before he had broken her self-control like this, but this time she was not going to give way.

She knew the exact moment when his cool amusement gave way to hard anger. She could feel it in the sudden changed pressure of his mouth as it moved against her skin, trying to prise her lips apart as they remained stubbornly closed to him, her eyes open and defiant as they met the smouldering rage in his.

When at last he raised his head, his eyes were murderous.

‘Finished?’ Autumn asked sweetly, enjoying her victory.

‘Like hell!’ Yorke responded, bending his head again and taking her still parted lips in a kiss of searing brutality, from which she automatically withdrew, closing her mind to what was happening and standing within the circle of his hard arms like a stuffed doll, and still it went on, punishing, probing, ripping the scars from old wounds and leaving her exposed and bleeding, her nails digging deep into the palms of her hands as she fought not to betray any emotion.

Yorke released her with a muttered oath and pushed her away, his face suffused with angry colour.

‘You little bitch, you enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ he grated.

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

‘No, I didn’t enjoy it, Yorke, no woman enjoys being humiliated and degraded, but I have learned to distinguish between punishment and pleasure. Now perhaps you understand what I mean when I say that nothing on this earth would induce me to live with you again as your wife.’

‘Not even if I promised you a divorce the moment the New Year Honours List is published?’ Yorke suggested softly.

She was powerless to prevent her instinctive reaction, and hope leapt to life in her eyes as they flew to meet him.

‘Think carefully about it, Autumn. I can make it easy for you, or drag you and the past all through the courts, opening up all the old scars. I can fight you every inch of the way and you’ll be the one who’s hurt, I’ll make sure of that. Remember how it was between us, and think hard before you decide whether you want it spilled out in front of strangers. All I’m asking for is four months of your time. You give me what I want and I’ll tell my solicitors to draw up the divorce papers the moment the Honours List is announced.’

She ran her tongue round lips which had suddenly gone bone dry. She knew that Yorke wasn’t making idle threats and shivered suddenly, tormented by the vivid picture he had drawn, knowing that she could not face the sort of court action he was talking about.

‘You want that divorce—and badly,’ Yorke reminded her softly. ‘Don’t bother trying to deny it. I’m even prepared to put my promise to agree to our divorce in writing if you wish.’

‘You’ll have to,’ Autumn responded crisply, checking as he pounced in triumph.

‘So you’ll do it?’

What alternative did she have? Another two years of hell, trying to hold back the past, with the ordeal and blood-bath of a court hearing at the end of it, or four months of playing the part of Yorke’s ‘wife’ in return for her immediate freedom.

She took a deep breath to steady herself.

‘Yes, I’ll do it, Yorke, but on two conditions. Your promise in writing that the divorce begins the moment the Honours List is published, and your agreement to helping Alan with this venture. That shouldn’t prove too burdensome—eventually the island will prove extremely profitable.’

‘No third condition?’ he taunted softly. ‘Banning me from your bed? A safeguard in case you forget that you’ve turned into a piece of ice and remember how it used to be with us.’

His words brought back memories Autumn would rather have remained forgotten, but she managed to breathe evenly without betraying any of her inner turmoil. He had broken through her defences once tonight; he wasn’t going to do it again.

‘I don’t need a third condition, Yorke,’ she told him quietly. ‘As we shall no doubt be living in your apartment and the bed will be yours, the problem shouldn’t arise. Or have you forgotten telling me that the only way I would ever get into it again would be if I crawled on my hands and knees and begged? My begging days are over, Yorke. I wouldn’t ask you for water if I were dying of thirst. The only reason I’m agreeing to come back to you at all is for the pleasure in four months’ time of leaving the past behind me for ever.’

She saw the colour leave his face, and knew that she had touched a raw spot. When it came to dishing out the contempt Yorke was a past master, but it was a different matter when he was on the receiving end of it. Bile rose in her throat and she felt the bitterness of the past rising up to swamp her, fighting off the cringing memories of that last destructive quarrel when Yorke had thrown those words at her. She had known then that she must get away from him or be completely destroyed, because then her need of him had been so great that she had known that she could not continue to live with him and not eventually plead with him to make love to her, and once she did that she would have destroyed the last fragile remnant of her self-respect.

‘I hope Alan appreciates what you’re doing for him,’ York said sardonically, interrupting her train of thought. ‘Or is it just for him?’ His hand caressed her bare arm, the flesh rising in goosebumps under his skilled fingers, his mouth descending to tease her skin with coaxing, soft kisses. Autumn forced herself to remain still and cold.

‘No, Yorke,’ she told him quietly. ‘It’s for me as well. Call it part of my therapy. I’d like to tell you that having you touch me fills me with loathing,’ she added calmly, ‘but that isn’t true.’

She felt him stiffen and sensed that he was expecting her surrender.

‘You see, Yorke,’ she told him emotionlessly, ‘I feel nothing. Nothing at all, neither for you nor anyone else. You destroyed my ability to feel.’

She moved away from him as she spoke, acutely aware of him behind her as he unlocked the door, throwing her the key.

‘Don’t try running out on me, Autumn,’ he warned her curtly, ‘or I’ll make you wait for eternity for divorce. The moment I’ve got the negotiations here all wrapped up, we’re leaving—together.’

Autumn did not respond. She could not. It was taking all her will-power merely to breathe. She felt as though she had died and been born again, living through some dreadful, indescribable holocaust, to emerge from it another person.

How long she stood staring out of the window she did not know. A soft tap on her door roused her, and Sally’s anxious face told her how concerned her friend had been.

‘I saw Yorke leaving,’ she said by way of explanation for her presence. ‘What happened?’

‘He’s promised me my divorce, provided I live with him for the next four months.’ Autumn explained the situation emotionlessly, whilst Sally listened.

‘You’re hoping that living with him will free you from whatever it is that haunts you from the past, aren’t you?’ she said shrewdly.

‘In a way,’ Autumn agreed wryly. ‘Don’t hypnotists use much the same method for freeing patients from their hang-ups? A mental regression to childhood to live through the trauma once more and come to terms with it?

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Sally said unhappily. ‘You could be playing with fire.’

‘I’m immune,’ Autumn told her. Discussing Yorke’s offer with Sally had helped to clarify her own thoughts on the subject, and confirmed her own view that the time for running was over, and yet still fear lingered, urging her to flight. That was the response of the gauche adolescent she had been, not the woman she now was.

‘Sure you don’t want me to stay?’ Sally asked her.

Autumn shook her head. She wanted to be alone, to think things through slowly and carefully. When Sally had gone she stared out of her uncurtained window, the soothing movement of the sea beckoning her like a benison, then she opened the french window and walked towards it.

For two years she had told herself that she was free, but she wasn’t, and never would be until she could lie in Yorke’s arms and feel nothing, apart from the intense satisfaction of her rejection of him!

The beach was in darkness and deserted, the faint strains of music reaching her from the hotel fading as she walked farther away from it, her feet making delicate imprints in the damp sand.

She loved the sea, endlessly fascinated by its ceaseless movement. Lying on it was like being rocked in a huge cradle. The tide had washed up a huge conch shell and she picked it up, shuddering a little as she glimpsed the fleshy eel-like conch inside. The sting of a conch could be particularly painful, and she made a mental note to remind the new holidaymakers of this fact in the morning. Collecting the varied shells to be found on the beaches was a favourite pastime with the visitors. The wooden beach hut which held the diving and snorkelling equipment was closed up for the night, the dinghies and windsurfers pulled up outside it; the two power boats the hotel used for water skiing drifted easily at anchor.

The beach came to an abrupt end, the black volcanic rock from which the Five Fathoms restaurant was carved stretching skywards in a sheer, unscalable cliff, thick with luxuriant vegetation, and plunging steeply into the sea. Autumn sat down on a piece of driftwood and stared out into the darkness.

Ever since she had left Yorke she had been hiding from her memories, but now she could hide no longer. The exorcism would have to start somewhere, and the very beginning was as good a place as any, she mused.

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

THE very first time she had set eyes on Yorke, Autumn had been standing behind the reception desk of the hotel where she worked, and she had been struck instantly by the hard-boned masculinity of his face and the sensual appeal of his tall, narrow-hipped body clad in a thick cream sweater and thigh-moulding dark pants.