She asked him, tensing herself against his answer, not knowing what to expect.
‘Business,’ he told her succinctly.
She was glad he couldn’t see her expression. ‘Business?’ Hadn’t that been partially to blame for their break-up? They should never have married in the first place; Yorke had never intended that they should. A brief affair had been all that he wanted, but he had underestimated her inexperience. It would have been better by far if she had simply had an affair with him, she admitted with hindsight, but at nineteen… She sighed, pulling her thoughts away from the past and turning round to face him.
‘Business?’ she reiterated with mocking bitterness. ‘You don’t change, do you, Yorke?’
‘Perhaps if there’d been something worth coming home to I might have come home more often,’ Yorke replied cruelly. ‘But we’re not talking about the past, Autumn, we’re talking about the future. I’m in line for a K—a knighthood,’ he explained curtly when she looked blank. ‘Services to industry, you know the sort of thing.’
She hid her surprise under a cool smile. Where his business was concerned Yorke was tirelessly ambitious, but she had never known position or wealth matter to him for their own sake.
As though he had followed her train of thought he added coolly, ‘For myself I don’t give a damn, but it will do the airline good, and the way competition is these days, every little helps. The problem is that I’ve been warned that under the present very correct government that it will greatly aid my chances of success if I were seen to be respectably married. The playboy image is not favoured, and that’s why I need a wife.’
‘You bastard,’ Autumn said huskily. ‘Go and find yourself one somewhere else, and get out of here.’
He laughed without humour. ‘What did you expect? That I’d come chasing all this way just to get you back into my bed? You always did have a highly charged imagination. You were good, Autumn, but not that good,’ he added brutally. ‘And as for finding myself a wife somewhere else, why should I, when I’ve still got you?’
Their eyes met and held, and Autumn could feel the hot anger welling up inside her, fighting it down as she tried to remain cool and controlled.
‘Stop it, Yorke,’ she warned him. ‘I’m not your possession. And I’m not coming back to you.’
‘Afraid?’ he taunted. ‘You haven’t changed at all, Autumn. You’re still running scared, still terrified of facing up to life.’
She tried to block out his words, but they held a core of truth which echoed bitterly through her.
‘I’m not afraid of you, or any man!’ she lashed back angrily. ‘The past is past for me, Yorke.’
‘But it isn’t, is it?’ he said softly. ‘How can it be while you’re still my wife—and that’s just what you are,’ he reminded her suavely. ‘No matter how much you’d like to deny it or forget it you can’t, can you? And how you hate it!’
His taunts made her writhe with mingled rage and anguish.
‘You’re a coward, Autumn,’ he said coolly. ‘You think you can escape from what happened by pretending not to see it, instead of facing up to it. Or is it something else you fear?’ he taunted softly. ‘Perhaps you’re not as indifferent to me as you pretend?’
‘Indifferent!’ She went white with anger, unable to prevent the highly charged surge of emotion his accusation aroused.
‘I’m not indifferent to you, Yorke,’ she told him bitterly. ‘I hate you, and I’ll go on hating you until the day I die. Does that satisfy you?’
She was panting slightly, her eyes glittering as she threw the words at him. ‘And as for our marriage… Get out of here, Yorke!’
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