Double Fault Read Online Free Page A

pressurized world of a sport that would soon reclaim him. It had also been the time that immature, scatterbrained Kerry Farrow had forgotten to take her contraceptive pills.  What an irresponsible child she had been.
    “I didn’t realize you were so sentimental,” she stamped on her memories with vitriol.  “I thought you would have discarded it years ago.  After all it’s not worth much.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong,” Pierce caught her hand as she reached again for the door, his eyes an unfathomable navy blue.  “It’s worth a great deal to me.”
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    His hand on her arm evoked too many memories and churned up already disturbed emotions.  Hastily she moved away.
    “Stop playing with me Pierce and give me my car keys.” She didn’t believe the lucky charm routine for a moment.  He was just piqued by her attitude.  She’d seen him in action far too often to believe the intent look and velvet phrase meant a thing. It was a purely reflex reaction, a matter of pride that nobody should leave his presence without succumbing to the well-known Simon charm.  She had seen him indulge it all over the world, seen hardened television journalists melt at his smile, seen female fans wait for hours for his autograph.  She had even fallen for it herself and how! But that was all behind her now and all she wanted to do was to get away from him and go back to the life she was beginning to make for herself.
    “I told you, your car won’t start,” he answered her as if she were a particularly annoying child as he let his hand drop to his side.  “Anyway what’s the hurry?  The least you can do is stay and have dinner with me and tell me what it is that you’ve been doing since we were together.”
    Their eyes met, his blue and calculating, hers grey and stormy.  She knew what he was thinking; that in two or three hours he could win her round and put her back into his bed for as long as he wanted her. A tiny thread of warning sounded in her subconscious telling her he was probably right, but it didn’t matter because she wasn’t going to give him the chance to find out.  She wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
    “No thank you,” her refusal was formal and polite.  “I haven’t finished work for the day and I’m busy this evening.”
    “Tomorrow then?” His expression sharpened as he searched her face, trying to decipher her reluctance.
    “Sorry,” she gritted her teeth as she attempted a disinterested shrug.  “The fact is I’m pretty tied up these days what with one thing and another.”
    And that isn’t a lie she told herself as she gave him an unblinking stare.  What with looking after the twins and cooking for Melanie’s Kitchen she hadn’t a spare minute to call her own.  From the moment Ben and Lauren woke her at six every morning, to the time her head hit the pillow around midnight, she rarely stopped working.  She fitted shopping and cooking into their nursery and nap times as much as possible, saving the inevitable housework and laundry until they were in bed in the evening.  It meant she was often on the go for eighteen hours with hardly a break, and if the twins were ill, as they had been this past week with fretful colds, then her five or six hours of precious sleep dwindled alarmingly, leaving her pale and hollow eyed. She knew she was too thin as well, so that most of her clothes hung on her and did little to enhance any remaining curves.  In fact she couldn’t think of one single reason for Pierce to pursue her, and after glaring at her for several seconds, he apparently felt the same.
    “In that case let’s see if the mechanic has finished with your car,” anger choked his voice as he held open the door and waited for her to precede him.
    They didn’t speak as they crossed the car park under a roiling mass of rain clouds. The mechanic working on her car stood up as they reached him and began to pack away his tools. She gave a sigh of