Luckily it fired the first time, but she was not prepared for the speed with which he raced back towards her, or the force with which he wrenched open the driver’s door, clawing at her as he tried to drag her out.
She screamed, and then, realising that it was a waste of energy, she concentrated instead on maintaining her hold on the steering wheel. Luckily, by some miracle he had left the Land Rover in gear and so, crunching the gear-box horribly, she was able to set the vehicle in motion. As she turned it into a circle, not caring what might be in her way in the form of fences or walls, David still hung on to her arm. The pain from the biting grasp of his fingers made her long to lift both hands from the wheel and push at him, but she forced herself not to give in to it. His other hand clawed at her blouse, tearing the soft fabric. He kicked hard at her right leg, trying to dislodge her from the controls, and then thankfully the engine started to pick up speed.
He hung on to her for far longer than she had imagined possible, and she had visions of dragging his inert body with her for the rest of her life, but suddenly he let go. She heard the dull thud as he fell to the ground, but dared not stop to check if he was all right.
By some miracle she found the main road, not caring where it took her as long as it was away from David, but eventually she discovered she was heading in the right direction for the village.
It took her another twenty minutes to reach Kyle’s home.
The front of the house was in darkness. It was still only half-past eleven, but Kyle must have gone to bed. Thank God for that. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her in this state.
As she stopped the Land Rover and tried to climb out, she discovered that her legs were almost too stiff to obey her, partly from shock and partly from the pain in the one David had kicked. Something warm and sticky ran down inside her ruined blouse, and she dragged herself towards the front door with the slow, halting steps of a very, very old woman.
Just as she reached the door, she felt a wave of faintness wash over her. She fought desperately to control it, one hand clutching at the door, the other searching despairingly in her bag for her key.
When the door unexpectedly opened inwards the shock on top of so many other shocks was too much for her. She gave a harsh, terrified scream and then collapsed inwards in a dead faint.
Kyle caught her, his body jarred by the unexpected weight of her. He had been working in his study earlier in the evening and had fallen asleep, the remains of his jet lag catching up with him. The sound of the Land Rover had woken him, and he had come to the door to investigate.
Now, as he studied Heather’s white face and bruised body, a feeling of rage, so intense and all consuming that it threatened to overcome everything else, enveloped him.
The last time he had felt this anger had been when Heather had tried to kill herself. Then it had been directed inwards at himself. Now…
He carried her towards the sitting-room, and then changed his mind and headed for the stairs.
She came round just before he placed her on his bed, her eyes wild and frantic until they focused on his face, and terror faded. As they closed, he bit back the questions rioting inside him. Time enough for questions later, all but one.
‘Where is he?’
The harsh demand penetrated Heather’s fogged mind. She didn’t open her eyes, but turned her head in Kyle’s direction instead.
‘He took me to a farm…it’s…it’s empty…I left him there.’
‘Yes, I know it.’ He looked down at her, torn between two equally fierce needs, and in the end the more gentle of them won. He knew the farmhouse Heather meant quite well. It was remote and without a telephone. Unless Hartley decided to walk, he would be stuck there until daylight.
At that moment Heather opened her eyes again, her lashes fluttering weakly as though too heavy for her frailty to support.
Her fingers touched his sleeve and trembled against it, and as though she had read his mind she whispered huskily, ‘Kyle, don’t leave me.’
Heather heard herself say the words and was shocked by them; nearly as shocked as she had been by the expression of fierce rage in Kyle’s eyes.
From the past, her memory dredged up a taunt once thrown at her by a jealous school-friend. ‘He isn’t really your brother, and you’re in love with him, aren’t you?’
How fiercely she had denied it, how hard she had worked to prove to the world and to herself how much she disliked him. So much wasted energy, she reflected tiredly, so much mental torment and self-inflicted pain, and all for what? All to bring her to this point in her life when she was confronted with a dead end, with the truth she had fought so long to deny.
She loved Kyle. No wonder she had responded so quickly and so intensely to him. No wonder her flesh had quickened to his touch. No wonder she had hidden the truth from herself for so long.
Weak tears rushed into her eyes. Like a small, betrayed creature she wanted to crawl under the protection of a large rock and hide there until the danger had gone. Only it would never go. If she had mistaken the true nature of her feelings for Kyle at seventeen, she couldn’t mistake them now.
Tonight, trapped in the Land Rover with David, forced to confront her total revulsion towards him, she had had an illuminating mental image of Kyle, and she had seen him then not as her enemy, not as her unwanted adopted brother, but as a man. And not just any man; the man to whom everything within her that made her feminine instinctively turned, physically, mentally and emotionally.
She shivered beneath the knowledge, too weak to evade it as she had done so many times in the past. Where another teenager, given the same feelings, might have betrayed them, and thus worked through them, she had refused to admit them and had hidden them away so that they had grown and were now threatening to take over her whole life.
She groaned, and Kyle, hearing and mistaking the sound, swore. Listening to him, Heather flinched at the violence she could feel him containing. She moved and the light fell on her bruised leg.
Kyle touched it. His hand trembled slightly and she tensed. Was he, then, so furious with her that he was practically shaking with rage?
He had warned her and she had ignored him. She was lucky to have got off with little more than bruises and a bad fright.