'You!' Garth Clayton said in a stunned voice. 'What are you doing here?'

Faye, his estranged wife, faced him with her head up. Inwardly she was thinking, Two years, and he still hasn't forgiven me! Will that make it easier, or harder, to do what I have to?

'Aren't you going to invite me in?' she asked.

He didn't move. 'When you left this house you swore that you'd never come back.'

'We both said a lot of angry things on that night, but we didn't mean them.'

'I meant every word,' he said, unyielding.

He seemed older than his thirty-five years, she thought. There was a new darkness in his brown eyes and fine lines at the corners that hadn't been there before. He looked as though he lived on his nerves, neither eating nor sleeping enough. But he would always be a tall, handsome man, whose sensual, mobile mouth had once thrilled her, even though that mouth now had a look of strain and bitterness.

Faye knew that she, too, had altered. The gauche teenager of their wedding day had become a mother of two children with a mind of her own and enough strength to stand up to her husband's forceful personality. These days she had a poise and confidence that was reflected in the strong colours she wore, replacing the delicate hues of a few years ago.

'I've come to talk,' she said.

He stood back to let her pass. She could feel his eyes on her, taking in the new short crop of her light brown hair. She wasn't expensively dressed, but she had a tall, slender figure that made everything look good. Her russet suit with its gilt buttons looked stylish, suggesting a woman who was at ease with herself.

He indicated the living room and Faye was a little surprised to find it just as she remembered. Garth had been so angry when she left that she'd pictured him wiping out all traces of her, but everything was the same. This was where they'd had their final quarrel, when she'd tried vainly to make him understand why she had to escape him.