‘My type?’ he repeated, in a voice that had sent many a high-powered business rival ducking for cover. On her, however, it appeared to have less than zero effect.

„Yes, your type!‟ Surprisingly, Mattie found that she was enjoying this. Actually enjoying this! The initial shock of seeing him, the passing fear that he had followed her for a purpose, had somehow retreated. Obnoxious, patronising, arrogant boor he might very well be, but somehow she knew that he was not going to shove her down a dark alley so that he could have his wicked way with her.

She felt absolutely free to yell her lungs out at him and it was feeling very good to do just that. She hadn‟t yelled like this in a very long time and she should have. Instead of just accepting what had been going on in her personal life, instead of just submitting to the worse kind of emotional abuse at the hands of Frankie King, she should have released her pent-up rage and misery in a good old screaming match. It helped that she was doing it now. Wrong person but right sentiment.

„Sad losers with too much money who get a kick out of looking at pretty young girls. Oh, yes, I know your type. We all know your type! You don‟t want to do anything, you just want to look, give yourselves a little fantasy to take back to your miserable homes with your miserable wives and your unfortunate children!‟

„What?‟ Dominic was fast discovering that he hadn‟t been quite so prepared for a tongue like a whip. She glared ferociously at him, every inch of her bewitching face pouring scorn, and he began to laugh, a real, genuine belly laugh that only made her face tighten in further rage.

She turned on her heel, began to walk away, knowing that he would catch up with her, expecting it.

„You don‟t take the underground back to your house at this hour, do you?‟ he asked as he saw where she was heading.

„Go away, you pervert.‟

That, for him, was not acceptable. He moved ahead of her and then swung around so that he was barring her path, and he watched as she debated whether she should try and shoot past him, then obviously decide that she wouldn‟t be able to make it.

„Oh, no, you don‟t,‟ he said coldly.

„You‟re in my way, and if you don‟t clear off I‟m going to scream so loudly that I‟ll have every policeman within a ten-mile radius racing over to see what‟s going on!‟

„Is that another threat along the lines of telling your Harry, whoever he might be, that I‟ve followed you so that he can send one of his hit men to teach me a lesson?‟

„Get out of my way.‟ She found that she could barely breathe properly with him standing there like that, towering over her, his hard, good-looking face a study in angles and shadows.

„I don‟t take very kindly to being labelled a pervert.‟

„Do I look as though I care what you do or don‟t take kindly to?‟ But she uneasily felt a stab of guilt at the insult she had flung at him. Then she reminded herself that he was nothing but a good-looking face with a squalid mind, or why else would he have followed her out of the nightclub and cornered her on her way to the underground?

„So you label all the men you see in your line of work as perverts, do you?‟

„I want to get home. It‟s late and I don‟t need to spend time having this conversation with you. Now, excuse me.‟

„Why don‟t you take a taxi to your house?‟

„Because, not that it‟s any of your business, I can‟t afford the luxury. If I could afford to catch cabs here, there and everywhere, then I wouldn‟t be working at a nightclub, would I?‟

„We‟re not talking here, there and everywhere. We‟re talking at this hour in central London. The underground isn‟t a very safe place to be.‟ Or so he imagined. He, personally, seldom travelled on the underground. He had a driver so that he could work in the back of the car, and when he didn‟t want to use George he drove himself.

„You would know, would you?‟ Mattie snapped, reading his mind with staggering

accuracy. „When was the last time you went anywhere on the tube?‟ She gave a little grunt of pure scorn, at which point his mind told him to just leave the woman alone, to get a grip on himself.

„I was on my way to the underground myself, as it happens,‟ he heard himself saying, beyond all common sense.

„You‟re lying.‟

„So now I‟m a liar and a pervert, am I?‟

Mattie glared at him for a further few seconds and then dodged around him and began striding towards the illuminated underground entrance.

Dominic fell in line.

What the hell was he doing? he asked himself. What did it matter what a waitress in a nightclub thought of him? So what if she was exciting to look at? At the grand old age of thirty-four he should be over all that by now.

But still he found that he was walking alongside her, feeling her impotent anger simmering from every pore of her body, surreptitiously watching the proud tilt of her head, hands still resolutely thrust into her pockets, her bag, which was no more than a weathered knapsack, casually slung over one shoulder.

„Well, goodbye.‟ Mattie turned to face him as soon as they were in the station, virtually a ghost town at this time in the morning.

It was the first time she was seeing him in light and what she had taken for a

good-looking face, not dissimilar to the one that was probably lying, mouth open, empty whisky bottle at the side, waiting for her on the tired sofa in the sitting room, she now realised far exceeded that.

This man, whose name he had not even bothered to tell her because he was, of course, far too high and mighty for such niceties, especially when it came to the fact that he was just out for a good time with a woman he imagined would be an easy lay, went beyond good-looking. He was very firmly placed in the higher regions of staggering.

Faintly olive-skinned, short black hair, eyes that were as dark as midnight and a bone-structure that seemed to have been chiselled lovingly with perfection in mind.

„What stop are you getting off at?‟

„Not the same as yours,‟ Mattie answered smoothly, turning away and slotting her coins into the ticket machine. She always made sure that her change was ready for when she got to the ticket machine. No fumbling in bags. Not very safe.

„How would you know that?‟

„Because I have eyes in my head.‟ To prove her point, she insolently raked her eyes over his immaculately tailored suit, his handmade shoes, the gold watch on his wrist.

„I‟m delivering you to your door,‟ Dominic said flatly. There was something about this girl that made him concerned for her safety—her insurgency, perhaps. „So we do happen to be travelling to the same stop after all. And you needn‟t fear that I shall try and take advantage of you on the way.‟