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She put down her hair-brush and reluctantly rose from the dressing-table and went into the living-room to answer. With very little heart for the task, she had been trying to repair some of the ravages of an obviously sleepless night. She was pale and there were violet smudges beneath her eyes, even her hair had lost its usual shining bounce.

She picked up the receiver and gave the number, doing her best to sound bright and cheerful for Robin.

'Gillian?'

Her heart froze. Without conscious thought, she slammed down the receiver. How dared he! How could he!

Moments later, the telephone rang again. Gillian stared at it, tense, torn between the need to talk to him and a natural contempt for a man who promised to marry one woman and pursued another in almost the same breath.

She picked up the receiver, trembling, her heart thudding.

'Gillian? It's Mark.'

'What do you want?' she asked stonily.

'To talk to you, of course.' There was a caress in his warm voice. 'Steve gave me your number.'

'I can't talk ... not just now,' she said stiffly, choked with sudden tears.

'Aren't you alone?' he asked lightly.

'Of course I'm alone!' she said fiercely, bridling, angry pride conquering the rush of foolish, futile tears.

'Did I get you out of bed?'

'No.'

'It sounds as if all the prickles are back,' he told her, warm, teasing.

'What did you expect?'

There was a moment's silence at his end. Then he said quietly: 'Gillian, what is it? You seem angry. I hope you aren't hating me all over again?'

'Well, I am!' she said, proud, and hung up before he could weaken her resolution with the seeming concern in his tone.

Then she took the telephone off the hook.

Perhaps he wouldn't ring her again. Perhaps he would shrug those broad shoulders and accept that it was over and even be relieved that she didn't mean to make any embarrassing or unwelcome demands on him. But Gillian wasn't going to risk it. She couldn't bear to talk to him while her heart was so full. She wanted him so much that it might be too easy to forgive him and do anything he asked.

She was thankful that she wasn't on duty at weekends. At least she wouldn't run the risk of seeing him at the clinic that day and she wouldn't have to endure the excited chatter of patients and staff about his engagement to Louise Penistone.

By the time she did meet Mark, she meant to have her heart firmly under control and he wouldn't be able to melt her with the coaxing warmth in his deep voice or the smile in his eyes, she determined proudly.

It was a beautiful day. It didn't seem right that the sun could shine so brilliantly from a cloudless blue sky when her heart was so heavy. Grey skies and drenching rain would have been much more appropriate, she felt.

She didn't want to stay in the flat. She was much too restless, too wretched. She didn't want to see Robin who would certainly call at the flat when he couldn't reach her by telephone. He would have all the days of her life. She needed this one for herself.

She took the Mini and drove to the quiet stretch of coast where she had met Mark on that wet and windswept evening and begun to like him. She needed to be alone and she needed to think about Mark and come to terms with the bleakness of her life without him, and she needed the nearness of the sea with its soothing, calming influence.

She walked for a while, slowly, scuffing her feet in the wet sand. There weren't too many people about and no one took any notice of the slight figure in jeans and pale blue cotton blouse, hair tied loosely at her neck with a pale blue ribbon.

She paused to sit in the small wooden shelter, hugging her arms across her troubled breast, watching the waves surging against the shore as the tide came in and listening to the song of the sea and the whisper of the wind. The wind and the waves seemed to have only one sound that day ... the persistent throb of a man's name.

Foolishly, she slipped into a world of dreaming. A world where Mark held her in strong arms and kept her safe and content. A world where Robin and Louise had no place at all. A world of loving between a man and a woman who had been meant to meet and come together. For what else but destiny could have brought her all the way from Kit's to a private clinic in the heart of Sussex so that she could fall deeply, irrevocably and quite hopelessly in love?

Destiny could be very cruel, she thought wistfully. Why couldn't she have loved Robin, so dear and familiar and deserving? Or Steve with his admiration and affection and warm, friendly support?

She had disliked and despised Mark when she first met him. She hadn't encouraged his interest or wanted to be involved with him. She had resisted the tug of his physical magnetism and powerful personality for as long as she could. Why did she feel that he was all her happiness, the only man she would ever love and need, when he was the one man that she had been a fool to love?

A shadow fell across her as a tall figure blocked out the sun. Gillian glanced up, startled. Henry bounded forward and laid his head confidently on her knee and gave a light, friendly bark. Mark smiled down at her, just as confident of a welcome.

Her face blanched with the shock of seeing him and her heart missed a beat. She thrust the dog away from her involuntarily and wished she could do the same to his master.

'I said I didn't want to see you!' she said bitterly.

Mark crouched on his haunches to look into the small, stormy face and took the cold hands into his own. 'What's it all about, Gillian?' His tone was gentle. His heart was very fearful.

She wouldn't meet his eyes. 'How did you know I'd be here?' She resented his intrusion into her privacy. She wouldn't melt at his touch, his obvious concern.

'You weren't at the flat. You seemed to be cross and I thought you might be walking it off and I remembered that you came here before when you had something on your mind. It was worth a try. Then I saw your Mini.' A smile flickered in the grey eyes. 'I'm learning to love that car,' he told her lightly.

He couldn't make her smile. She looked past him to the rejected labrador who was consoling himself by digging a deep hole in the sand in search of treasure.

She tried to free her hands from his firm, determined clasp. 'I wish you'd go away and leave me alone,' she said fiercely. 'I don't want anything more to do with you—ever!'

His eyes narrowed at the hot words and the cold anger that prompted them. He searched the defiant blue eyes, dismayed.

He was hurt and baffled by her attitude. He could understand her natural reaction to the loss of her virginity to a man she scarcely knew. He had swept her off her feet and into bed with the urgency of his passion .Regret, some doubt, even anxiety were understandable and could be soothed away with the right words. He hadn't expected this anger, this loathing, this hurtful rejection.

'You're sorry that you slept with me? Is that it? Do you know how bad that makes me feel?' he asked quietly, with pain.

He released her hands and straightened and turned to stare at the gently rippling sea, proud and controlled. With a throbbing heart, Gillian looked at the handsome, suddenly stern face and the set of his broad shoulders, the clench of his hands. She almost believed that she had hurt him.

She hardened her heart. 'You used me,' she said stiffly. 'Do you know how bad that makes
me
feel?'

He turned, incredulous, instantly contrite. 'Then I've been very clumsy and you've every right to be angry !' he said swiftly.

Gillian was moved almost to tears by the genuine contrition and concern. There were depths to this man that she had never suspected when she first knew him. He had seemed so proud, so arrogant, so hard and uncaring. But he was sensitive and kind, capable of tenderness and humility and an endearing humour. He was warm and strong and gentle. He was everything that she had ever hoped for in a man. He was the only man that she would ever love.

And she couldn't say so.

So she said nothing.

Mark was beginning to feel desperate. He had tried to assure her that it wasn't just a casual and meaningless sexual encounter. He had wanted her to know that he regarded that night with each other as a commitment. He had never been so ready to love any woman. He knew that he didn't want to lose her now. He couldn't let her walk out of his life.

He stretched out his hand to touch her pale cheek in a tentative caress. 'I bought something for you yesterday,' he said quietly. 'I meant to give it to you today. Now I wonder if I should wait for tomorrow. If there's going to be any tomorrow for us, Gillian?' He was pleading, pride forgotten.

Her heart swelled. How could he suppose that they had any future when the present was so complicated by his engagement to Louise and her own promise to marry Robin? She didn't even know what he was asking of her. To be his mistress until he tired of her? To be content with the little he gave while the whole of his life was promised to another woman?

Loving him, needed him, Gillian still couldn't settle for an empty, meaningless relationship. She shook her head. 'No. It's over, Mark. I mean it.'

Her coldness smote him to the heart. But he couldn't accept the words. She was much too important to him.

'This isn't the Gillian that Henry knows and loves,' he said, striving for lightness, for his happiness, striving to warm the heart which had turned against him.

'No! It's the Gillian that's going to marry Robin McAllister!' she flared suddenly, furiously, feeling that he was entirely to blame for the foolish impulse that had urged her into that engagement.

His eyes were suddenly frightening chips of granite in a very stern face. 'When did that happen?' he demanded.

'Does it matter?' Her chin shot up at the autocratic tone. It was none of his business, she thought bitterly. Had she demanded to know any of the details about his engagement to Louise Penistone? He hadn't even had the decency to tell her about it himself!

'It matters a hell of a lot! Tell me!'

He was so forceful, his eyes blazing with such icy anger, that Gillian heard herself saying lamely: 'Last night... he asked me last night.'

'And you said yes? Just like that? I don't believe it,' he said bluntly.

She had seemed to be so happy in his arms such a short time before. She had seemed to know as surely as he did that it was a beginning and he just couldn't believe that she had been so ready to end it at a word from McAllister. She had said
I love you
and while he had doubted if she meant the warm, impulsive words, he had hoped that time would turn them into welcome reality.

She looked at him. 'Well, it's true. I'm engaged to Robin. It should have happened a long time ago,' she said defiantly.

'You're a fool, Gillian. You don't love the man,' he said impatiently, dismissively.

Gillian bridled. He had forfeited all right to. know whether she loved or didn't love! 'I'm the best judge of the way I feel about Robin, don't you think?' she returned coldly, with spirit.

'No, I don't,' he said brusquely, not mincing matters. 'But I can't stop you if you're set on marrying the poor devil. It's your life.' He spun on his heel and walked away from her, whistling to Henry. He was furious, shattered. He was very sure that it would be a long time before he came so near to loving again. Damn her! She had made a fool of him, after all!

Gillian looked after his tall, uncompromising figure, sick and shaken. It had only needed the right words and she would have sacrificed all Robin's loving and caring for the little happiness she might find with Mark, however fleeting. But he hadn't said anything. He was indifferent. He didn't care if she married Robin or any other man. He just didn't care ...

Suddenly Mark turned and came back, taking a small, square box from his jacket pocket. 'You might as well have this, anyway,' he said harshly. 'It's only a trinket. Call it a memento. Do what you like with it. It isn't any good to me now.' He tossed the box into her lap Then he was gone, striding fast and furious along the beach.

Gillian didn't want anything from him but the one thing that he would probably never give to any woman. His real and lasting love. She couldn't imagine what he had bought for her. She didn't really care, she told herself proudly.

But she was much too feminine to resist the curious urge to find out. She opened the box and discovered a gold ring, two sculptured hearts entwined on a slender band. Her own heart shook as she stared at it in disbelief.

She ran after him impulsively. 'Mark! Wait, Mark!'

Having reluctantly left his fascinating hole in the sand at last, Henry ran With her, leaping, barking, loving the game.

Mark didn't slacken his stride.

Gillian caught up with him, tugged at his arm. He halted and looked down at her. At the look in his eyes, her heart faltered.

She held out the ring box. 'I can't take this, Mark. It's beautiful but I don't want it,' she said unhappily.

He shrugged. 'Then throw it in the sea.'

'I can't do that!'

'Why not? It doesn't seem to mean anything to you,' he challenged.

'It might have meant everything,' she said, low, tremulous. Tears brimmed suddenly in her eyes. She looked up at him, no longer proud. Loving him, she needed to know what had prompted the gift. 'Why did you buy it, Mark?'

He hesitated. Then he smiled and brushed a tear from her thick lashes with a tender finger and saw that she quivered at his touch. His heart contracted. 'You'd given me so much,' he said quietly and with truth. 'I wanted to give you something to show that you're special in my life. It's the way I feel.'

'How can I be special? You're going to marry Louise,' Gillian said bleakly.

Mark suddenly understood and wondered why he hadn't realised that the absurd gossip about himself and Louise must have reached her ears and might even have hurt her. It might certainly be the reason why she had snubbed him so persistently when all his instincts had insisted that they were meant for each other.

He put his arms about her slight and very feminine body. 'No, I'm not,' he said gently.