‘You mean you didn’t fall in love with my upright character and solid virtue?’ she’d teased.

‘What do you think?’

How they had laughed together, and the laughter had ended, as it always did, in passion.

‘I thought you looked like Minerva,’ he’d said once. ‘I’ve got a picture of her with flowing hair, although not as beautiful as yours.’

‘But who was she?’ asked Alysa, whose education had been practical rather than artistic.

‘She was the ancient goddess of warriors, medicine, wisdom and poetry.’

It had become his special name for her, to be used only in the darkness.

He scowled when she dressed for work, taking up her hair and donning a severe suit.

‘It’s for my job,’ she’d chided him fondly. ‘I can’t be Minerva for my clients, only for you.’

Once she’d had a couple of inches cut off, without telling him, and he’d been annoyed.

They had actually squabbled about it, she recalled now, smiling.

But tonight she’d taken care to look just as he liked-a slinky dress that took advantage of her slim figure, hair flowing down to her waist so that he could run his fingers through the cascade and bury his face in its perfumed softness. Then they would go to bed, and afterwards, as they lay in each other’s arms, she would tell him her wonderful secret.

If only he would get here soon!

CHAPTER ONE

THE cold February sunlight glittered over the place where fifteen people had died in one terrible moment.

Far below, the crowd looked up to where the hanging chairs swung over the top of the waterfall. They were newly installed, replacing the ones that had broken suddenly, tossing the screaming occupants down, down to the churning water, to be smashed on the rocks.

That had been one year ago today, and the crowd of mourners was there to remember the loved ones they had lost. Out of respect for the foreign victims the service was held in both Italian and English.