When the Devil Drives

CHAPTER EIGHTIT WAS late afternoon before Joanna returned to Chalfont House.She'd been driving around endlessly, aimlessly for hours, trying tomake some kind of decision about her life, a plan for the future, andfailing miserably. She could think of nothing but that brief, searingand hideously final confrontation between Cal and herself.Over and over again she told herself that Cal's dismissal of her was nomore than she'd expected, and that she should be thankful that he hadwearied of his joke before taking their 'relationship to the ultimateintimacy. She'd been spared that humiliation at least.'It's all for the best,' she kept whispering to herself, as if repeatingsome mantra against harm. 'All for the best.'But although she might be able to harness her mind rationally, it wasnot so easy to control bruised emotions or the physical and sensualawareness which he'd so swiftly and shockingly aroused.Her aroused and aching body screamed at her that it had been cheatedof its fulfilment. And the shaming thing that would haunt her foreverwas that Cal, not herself, had been the one to draw back.Joanna knew that if he'd pulled her down there and then on to thefloor of Simon's office, and taken whatever he wanted from her, shewould not have gainsaid him. And Cal, of course, would be aware ofthat too.That was something she would have to live with.It was a kind of perverse comfort, however, to know that he hadn'tbeen totally immune either. That although his plan had been tomanipulate and torment her, there had come a moment when he'ddesired her as hotly and completely as she wanted him.