For One Night. PENNY JORDAN

told him curtly. “As far as I’m concerned we are two complete strangers, meeting now for the first time.”

      There, that should make her position clear enough to him; that should soothe his fears. The thought that he had actually surmised that she had pursued him … that she might actually try to make trouble for him with his wife, regardless of the latter’s feelings, sickened her.

      He was looking at her in a way she found hard to define; a mixture of rueful comprehension and masculine amusement.

      Oh yes, now that he knew he had nothing to fear from her, he no doubt felt he was in a far more powerful and safe position. She hated the thought that they were conspirators in something she considered morally wrong. She had never been involved with a married man. She was fiercely glad now that she had adopted the mantle of widowhood. He would never know that she had conceived his child. Never.

      He was shaking his head slightly, and grinning ruefully at her. “I never imagined when I asked Derek Soames to sell Alice’s place that this would happen.”

      “No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Diana agreed crisply, heading for the door. “However, it has. Oh, and for the record, Mr. Simons,” she told him from the open doorway, “I do not run after any member of your sex, but most particularly those members of it who happen to be married. I hope I make myself clear.”

      “As mud,” he told her with a frown. “You and I need to talk.”

      “No!”

      She’d done all the talking she intended to do. For a moment, she thought he actually intended physically to prevent her from leaving, but at the last moment he seemed to change his mind, and he let her walk through the still open door.

      More by good luck than anything else she found her way back to the front door. She was still shaking five minutes later when she drove her car out of the open gates.

      At the first stopping place she parked her car and sat there, willing her lacerated nerves to heal.

      Of all the most appalling coincidences. What trick of mischievous fate had brought them together like this? That Mr. Soames—that most correct and proper of men—should be the innocent author of their dual misfortune, only increased her sense of disbelief. It was almost stretching coincidence too far. Almost as though fate had decided that what had happened was meant to be. Quickly she pushed the thought away, not liking its implications.