I could just turn round and leave, she thought, willing herself to do it.

The next moment she jumped out of her skin as a weirdly familiar voice inches from her ear drawled, ‘Is he your boyfriend? I’m amazed, I didn’t take you for the kind of girl who’d let men boss you about like that.’

Chapter 22

Liza’s heart began hammering wildly in her chest. Kit Berenger was standing next to her, arms crossed, feet apart, sunglasses in place as he calmly surveyed the scene of chaos spread out before them. He was wearing black jeans, a black and white striped shirt and that familiar aftershave.

Had it occurred to her that he might turn up today, the final day of the protest?

Of course it had.

So far, Kit Berenger had seen her sweating and out of breath after an hour on the squash court, and in her eating-out frump of-the-year disguise. Now for the first time he was seeing how she really looked.

Liza couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that this was why she had taken such care with her appearance today.

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ she said as calmly as she could manage, ‘I don’t let him boss me about, and since I’ll be thirty-two next week, I’m hardly a girl.’

‘Well, you’re hardly an ancient old trout.’

Was there actually a flicker of a smile playing around his mouth? Sideways on, and never having seen Kit Berenger smile before, it was hard to tell.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, his tone conversational, ‘what are you doing here, dressed up like a Christmas tree?’

Liza ignored the jibe. ‘Same as everyone else. Protesting.’

‘You don’t look much like a protester. You’ve washed your hair for a start.’

Before she could move, one hand came up and touched her blonde hair, idly following the line of the curve between her left temple and shoulder.

Liza shivered and looked up at him, but the narrow mouth gave nothing away. The eyes were still hidden behind black glasses.

‘My cousin heard from your editor, by the way,’ said Kit. ‘Loads of people wrote to the magazine defending the Songbird. Nearly a hundred letters altogether, saying you were out of order.’

‘Really,’ said Liza, who had written most of them. ‘They’re printing a selection in next month’s issue.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Liza steadily. ‘Looks like I was wrong and you were right.’

He took off his sunglasses. Liza waited for another smart remark. But he didn’t say anything, just gazed down at her.

Alistair, meanwhile, was being dragged down from his digger by a pair of sweating policemen, one thin, one burly, like Laurel and Hardy. Mid-tussle, he spotted Liza and a tall dark-haired boy making no effort to join in the protest.

‘Hey, you two! Get yourselves in front of that bulldozer, fast.’

Kit called back, ‘Actually, we’d rather not.’

The next moment, as Alistair disappeared beneath a heaving mound of navy-blue serge, Kit Berenger reached out and took hold of Liza’s hand. His strong fingers gripped her wrist.

‘What are you d-doing?’ Liza gasped, trying to snatch it away.

‘Taking your pulse.’ He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Hmm, fast. Very fast.’

This was even more humiliating than being hauled into a police van in struggling-beetle position, as was now happening to Alistair. Liza stared hard at the goings-on at the back of the van and pretended she hadn’t heard Kit Berenger speak.

‘Mine too,’ he went on, releasing his grip on her wrist and offering her his own. ‘Have a feel if you want.’

‘No thanks,’ Liza replied faintly.

‘The thing is, there’s something I’ve been wanting to do rather badly for quite a while now,’ said Kit. ‘Is it okay with you if I give it a go?’

Liza could barely breathe.

‘Not if you’re going to slap my face.’

‘I don’t want to slap your face.’ He turned her slowly towards him, so there was no escaping the look in those extraordinary black-lashed, yellow-gold eyes. ‘I want to kiss your mouth.’

This, thought Liza, is ridiculous .. .

Then she stopped thinking because it was too late now to do anything, let alone think. Kit Berenger’s mouth came down on hers and Liza gave herself up to it, utterly helpless to protest.

Every nerve in her body was going zinnggg. She was only managing to stay standing because his arms were keeping her up. The knees had gone, the stomach had disappeared .. .

Just don’t stop, Liza silently begged him, willing the kiss to go on and on. Please don’t stop.

‘Bloody hell, it’s Kit Berenger,’ exclaimed the reporter, gazing in amazement at the scene confronting him as he made his way back to the car for a fag break. ‘Oi, Joe, over here,’ he yelled, beckoning frantically for the photographer. ‘Look who’s snogging Liza Lawson! Get a shot of this, for Chrissake.’

Alistair was still putting up a terrific struggle, resisting every effort to bundle him into the back of the police van. Hearing the journalist’s words, he twisted round and stared in horror at Liza who appeared to be clinging to Kit Berenger for dear life.

‘You bastard, take your hands off her this minute,’ roared Alistair. ‘Liza, what the hell d’you think you’re doing? Don’t you know who that is?’

In no time they were the centre of attention. The protesters had all stopped to watch. Joe was using up his last roll of film.

‘I always say you can’t beat a bit of privacy,’ Kit Berenger murmured against Liza’s mouth, his hand stroking the back of her neck.

When the Evening Post reporter had been eating his Big Mac earlier, a group of New Agers had hissed ‘murderer’ at him. Now, behind her back, Liza could hear them hissing ‘traitor’ at her.

‘I may not get out of here alive,’ she said, her voice still unsteady, her whole body quivering shamelessly with lust. ‘At least they’re vegetarians, they won’t eat you alive.’ A nightmare thought struck Liza.

‘Why did you do this, to make a fool of me?’

‘Come on.’ Kit half smiled down at her. ‘You don’t really think that. I did it because it had to be done. Before we both drove each other demented.’

Liza nodded. She could no longer deny it; the chemistry was simply there between them. It had been from the word go.

‘How old are you?’ she asked, needing to know the worst.

‘Twenty-three.’

‘I’m thirty-two.’ It sounded terrible. She had never been out with anyone younger than her before. Not even nine months younger, let alone nine years.

‘No you aren’t, you’re thirty-one.’

‘Only until next week.’

Kit grinned. ‘A week’s a long time in politics.’

The protest had by this time pretty much fizzled out. When the protesters’ attention had turned to Liza and Kit, the contractors had revved up their engines and got busy with the bulldozers, to-ing and fro-ing at surprising speed as they shifted great mounds of earth.

The police van, with Alistair’s outraged face glaring out of the tiny back window, bumped and jiggled its way across the churned-up ground on to the main road.

‘You must be joking,’ said Kit when the reporter from the Evening Post asked him for a quote.

‘Liza?’ The reporter looked not-very-hopefully hopeful. ‘She doesn’t have anything to say either.’

‘I think I’d better go home,’ said Liza, when they were alone again. She was floundering, unsure what was going to happen next. He might be nine years younger, but Kit Berenger had somehow automatically assumed control of the situation. If he were to bundle her into that dark-green Bentley of his, Liza thought with longing, and whisk her off somewhere – anywhere – to bed, she would willingly go.

‘I’ve got a heavy day too.’ Kit glanced at his watch – that ludicrous purple Swatch. ‘I’m already running late. Sorry,’ he smiled slightly as he led the way back to their cars, ‘if I’d known this was going to happen, I could have postponed a few meetings. You’d better give me your phone number.’

He leaned against the bonnet of the Bentley and wrote the number on the back of a crumpled ten-pound note pulled from the pocket of his jeans. Liza, who couldn’t bear men with namby-pamby handwriting, was passionately relieved to see how assertive he was with a pen, not nancyish at all.

As he helped her into the Renault, his lips brushed hers, thrillingly, once more.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Kit.

My God, you’d better be, thought Liza, far too proud to ask when.

Chapter 23

‘Did someone slip something into my cocoa?’ Dulcie demanded with suitable drama two days later. ‘Am I hallucinating? Or is this really a photo I see before me in the local paper – on the front page, no less – of my friend Liza snogging with the enemy?’

Liza bit her lip, gazed out of the window and said nothing.

‘And you can turn that sodding answering machine off for a start,’ Dulcie went on, ‘because it isn’t fooling anyone. We know you’re in there. Dammit,’ she wailed the next second, ‘do you want me to die of curiosity?’

That, thought Liza, would be too much to hope for. Chewing her pen, she leafed irritably through the research notes she was amassing in preparation for her new book, a history of Mediterranean cookery.

‘Fine, I get the message,’ said Dulcie in a sing-song voice when it became clear Liza had no intention of picking up the phone. ‘But don’t think you can hide for ever. The minute I can walk again, I’ll be over. I don’t know what you’ve been up to,’ she concluded briskly, – God, now she sounded like Joyce Grenfell on speed – ‘but I’m jolly well going to find out.’

Dulcie rang off at last. Wearily, since the kitchen table might be awash with reference books but that didn’t mean she was getting a stroke of work done, Liza snapped the file shut and switched the kettle on instead. For the millionth time she compulsively checked her watch.