'So is there any man in your life', Gerhard asked again as Sharon looked at him saying nothing but smiling.She shook her head.'Not at the moment. Have you met the girl of your dreams yet?'He laughed. 'I keep hoping, but so far not luck'.'Maybe you are too difficult to please!''I have been brought up to expect the best', he agreed with wry amusement. 'No doubt you are right but never mind, I enjoy my life. I'm free, single and love to mingle as they say'.'You still watch that program on TV?''All the time. When I work at home, I have the TV on the music program blaring, it helps me think and keeps with awake during long nights'.'I wonder how people managed before recorded music!'Sharon said thoughtfully.Gerhard told her how his parents had their own personal chamber orchestra.Sharon ate her salad slowly as she listened to him. She had just finished her salad when the delegates started moving away towards the conference hall. The conference was starting again in fifteen minutes'

Sharon looked at him with disgust. He's really got guts. Coming to drag her down for breakfast but she did not doubt that he would do it too. His arrogance was becoming intolerable.'Get your foot out of my door!''Are you trying to get me to lose my temper? Bryan ground out between his teeth.'What happens if you do?' she asked. ' Ate you going to turn into a monster and tear us into pieces?'He wasn't amused, a dark colour went round his face as he said coldly, 'Very funny'.On an impulse, she said, ' You were wrong about Gerhard you know. He was a gentleman all through the evening unlike some people I know'.Bryan laughed without humour. 'But that was because I got you out of there before the evening ended'. His gaze slid from her face to her neck, her shoulders and her breasts.His eyes flared with rage, 'If you had come back here with him in a taxi late at night, looking like that, he wouldn't have just seen you off to your door and said goodnight. That dress is an invitation to

When Sharon woke the next morning, Bryan was gone and she might almost have thought that she had dreamt the night before except that as she sat up in the bed, she saw a note a note lying on the pillow next to her and recognized his bold and distinctive handwriting.The message was brief, almost curt. 'Breakfast downstairs at seven forty five. B'.That was all it said. He hadn't even said good morning nor even signed with his name, just with an impersonal initial.There was no indication whatoever of the intimacy they had shared the previous night.She ran a fingerprint over the writing,as though she were touching him and felt her inside dissolve completely.She thought of Bryan and images of the memorable night they had ran through her mind and she trembled.She wished that he had stayed behind so that they could have had another session. She knew that if he had still been there, she would have thrown herself at him again. At least she would have been the one to initiate it this time

The drive to the conference hall this time was endless. Sharon wondered when it would come to an end. The venue was not far from their hotel but today, the distance seemed to have increased tremendously. The car was claustrophobic, stifling her and making her feel like screaming, shut up in it with Bryan. His body far too close, every movement he made tearing at her nerves and making her sweat.She was so tense that as they got out of the car to go into the conference, she caught her heel on the Kerb.Bryan put an arm around her to stop her from falling, and as their bodies touched,Sharon had that familiar dizzying sense of the world spinning round her.She pushed him away, trembling and as she did so, caught sight of a dark red graze on the side of his throat, just under his ear.Heat enveloped her as she realised what it was. She had bitten him last night in the last moments of their lovemaking. She hadn't realised that she was leaving such obvious marks. What if someone noticed, m

After the call, Sharon went over the Japanese stock market, observing all the shares they held and how they were doing. She had an appointment with a Japanese client that afternoon and wanted to know what she was talking about when she met him.She was coming out of the beautiful building which housed the bank at Lunch time when she saw Bryan strolling towards her from the taxi that had just dropped him.He looked at her and in his head, he thought, 'Look at the lady who made him feel less than what he was. She tries to put me down at all times but she does not know that I cannot be out down. I am like a mountain that cannot be shaken. Instead of allowing myself be put down by the likes of her, I shall cease to be Bryan Ferdinand. She reported sick but there is no sign of the I'll health in her. She looks as cool and as beautiful as ever and I want her desperately but I'll be damned if I'd let her know after hurting my feelings at every turn,by flinching away from me, from my touch bu