Mattie sat down. Her legs felt shaky anyway. Well, they would do, wouldn‟t they, she thought a little frantically, considering she herself felt as though she had been suddenly stuffed into a tumble-drier that had been turned on full speed?

„You can‟t just waltz in here and take over my life like this!‟

„I can and I am. Is this all the food you have in this place?‟ He looked scathingly at the virtually bare kitchen cupboard. A jar of coffee, some sugar, some baked beans, pasta, a couple of cans of tuna. „Have you been eating at all?‟ He slammed the contents of the cupboard into the box then turned to look at her narrowly and accusingly.

„Of course I have!‟ Guilt made her defensive and she glowered at him from under her lashes. This was all happening so fast. It seemed to her that after a life that had dragged on and on and on, everything had sped up the minute this man appeared on the scene. Their affair, her job, her hurt when she had discovered how he had manoeuvred her to get what he wanted, then the pregnancy. Now this.

„You barely touched your food tonight, I noticed.‟

„Can you blame me? I was feeling just a tiny bit nervous about what I had to say to you!‟

„Aside from anything else, you need supervision if you‟re not going to eat properly.‟ He opened the fridge, which was almost as bare as the cupboard.

„ Supervision? Now you‟re being absurd. And will you please close that fridge? It has a habit of conking out if the door‟s held open for too long!‟

Dominic shut the fridge very quietly, leant against it and gave her a long, hard look.

„Well, that says it all about this place. Your landlord ought to be reported. In fact, I‟ve a good mind—‟

„All right! I‟ll move back to the apartment. I‟m sure Liz wouldn‟t mind…‟

„You‟re coming with me and tomorrow we‟re going to go shopping. For a ring. Then we‟re going to arrange for a registrar. Then you‟re going to phone your parents and explain everything and I‟ll call mine.‟

„I haven‟t even told Frankie,‟ Mattie whispered. She might have missed the morning sickness but, thinking about it, she had been feeling very fragile recently. Prone to tears. That probably explained why she had spent every night crying since Dominic had disappeared from her life. No, of course it didn‟t.

But she was feeling very fragile now. Her head drooped and she rested it wearily on the table.

She was hardly aware of Dominic until she felt his hand stroke her downturned head. It felt strangely soothing. Then she heard him pull up a chair until he was sitting right next to her.

„What a mess,‟ Mattie said, twisting her head so that she was still draped on the table but looking at him now.

„Why do you find it so upsetting that you haven‟t told Frankie?‟ Keep it light, Dominic thought, unthreatening. But just the mention of that loser‟s name was enough to arouse a raw anger inside him. At a time like this, the last person he wanted her thinking about was her ex-boyfriend.

„It didn‟t even occur to me,‟ Mattie admitted.

Dominic felt the temptation to smile broadly. He adopted a serious, compassionate expression and continued to smooth her hair, her wonderful silky, fair hair that looked like spun gold between his long brown fingers.

„Why should it? Your mind‟s everywhere at the moment. I‟m surprised you can think coherently at all.‟

„I suppose.‟ She straightened up. Her eyes looked huge, like great big green pools, shimmering with un-shed tears.

An unwelcome thought hit him like a physical blow to the head. What if, now that she had the virtue of comparison, she was beginning to think that what she had felt for Frankie had been love after all? That real love, the icing-on-the-cake kind of love, that she didn‟t feel for him? He knew he could be arrogant and yes, he supposed, selfish. What if she had begun to wonder whether her ex-boyfriend‟s laziness and who-gives-a-damn attitude might just be preferable to a monster who had made the mistake of trying to arrange her life to suit his purposes, which was how she thought of him?

Pain and uncertainty sliced through him like a knife and his jaw tightened. They added to the long list of alien feelings that had transgressed over those character traits which he had hitherto taken for granted, his iron self-possession, his talent for focus, his knowledge that he had his life utterly under his control.

„Well,‟ he stood up, impatient with himself, „no point sticking around here. Let‟s go.‟

Dark, coolly determined eyes looked at her.

Mattie stood up as well but her mouth was stubbornly set in a line. „I‟ll come with you, Dominic. But no rings and no arranging for a registrar.‟

„We‟ll see.‟ He turned on his heel and headed for the door, en route collecting the suitcase he had earlier packed.

Discretion being the better part of valour, Mattie refrained from embarking on another fruitless argument with him. For the moment, she would go with him to his apartment and she would make sure to sleep in the spare bedroom. Tomorrow she would say what she had to say, make her compromises and clear out because she was desperately afraid that if she didn‟t she would end up doing just what he wanted her to do. Not because she believed that marrying him was the only option, but because the thought of just spending the rest of her life with the man she loved was so alluring.

It was all too easy for her mind to race ahead to a scenario that had her trying to make him fall in love with her, enslaved by his natural charm, then watching as her efforts gradually began to repel him as she became as much of a nuisance as his last woman who had made the mistake of becoming obsessive.

Discovering the part he had played in getting her that job had brought her up short, and she knew that she had to cling to what she had learnt from the experience or risk going under.

Only when she was lying in her own bed an hour later did she begin to feel the strain.

She had got what she wanted, the spare room and solitude, but her victory seemed empty.

And temporary. He had allowed her her little stand but for how long? He had pointedly not returned to any conversation about marriage, but she knew that in the morning he would resume his onslaught. And he hadn‟t touched her. Maybe he was saving that up as his trump card, knowing that she would melt in his arms just the way she always had.

The questions drove her crazy. She felt like someone poised to defend herself only to discover that the opponent was nowhere to be seen, especially when the remainder of the weekend was spent without further mention of rings or marriages or registrars.

They spent Saturday shopping. No jewellery stores but instead in clothes shops for her.

She would need looser clothes, he assured her with a display of old-fashioned conventionality that would have been touching had she not been so busy protecting herself from getting drawn into the powerful net he was weaving around her.