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'Mrs Robertson . . .' Her attention was claimed by one of her children. ' . . . that was ace, Mrs Robertson!' Ace was the most popular word in the school and Dani heard it fifty times a day. Yet she still appreciated the compliment and when more of her children crowded around her and asked about the puppets, she took them around to the back of the booth and drew out the dragon.

'Make him wink, Mrs Robertson,' another child begged, and with an inward sigh Dani abandoned the idea of finding herself a cold drink and relaxing until the next performance and settled herself on the grass to demonstrate her handiwork, making the dragon wink at one little girl.

'Do the growly voice,' the first child, Darren, said insistently.

'Darren, I can't. That was Mr McCulloch, not me. I can't make my voice go that deep.'

'Try. Please!'

'All right.' She lowered her voice and attempted to imitate Prentice's rendition of the dragon's gruffness, leaning back against the trunk of the cedar tree and tucking her feet to one side as an over-enthusiastic child fell over them in an attempt to get closer.

'That's a super hat, Sally!' She spied a baseball cap, obviously meant for an adult, that almost obscured the face of one of her pupils. 'Where did you get it?'

'White elephant stall, miss.' Sally took it off and held it out. 'D'you want to try it on?'

'Yes, please.' It was even too big for Dani's head, but she stuck it jauntily on the back and then impulsively held out her hand to Sally's three-year-old brother. Nicholas had always been a secret favourite of hers from the time he had sat up in his pram and favoured her with a great, toothless grin. He was more shy with her now, but she found him powerfully endearing and when he came to sit on her lap, propelled by his more outgoing sister, she snuggled his sturdy body against her own and made the dragon wink at him, too.

'I've brought you a drink.'

Startled, she looked up and saw Prentice standing on the edge of her group. He looked taller than ever from her sitting position on the grass, and she was suddenly and acutely aware of the baseball cap perched on the back of her head, of the small boy in her lap, and the way the children were clamouring for her attention.

'Thank you.' She extricated her arm from around Nicholas's waist and prepared to stand up.

'Please . . .just one more wink!' The irrepressible Darren again, and at once the other children took up the request.

'Please . . . please, Mrs Robertson.'

'Just once more.' She made the dragon wink very slowly and very deliberately three times and then set Nicholas back on his feet. 'Go and find your parents,' she told the children. 'If I don't have a drink then I won't have any voice left for the rest of the afternoon.'

The children moved away obediently, one or two of them casting curious glances at the big man who was occupying their teacher's attention, and Dani scrambled up from the grass and held out her hand for the drink.

'Thank you,' she said warmly. 'I think you've saved my life!' Impishly she raised the glass a little to toast him and then saw the frozen look on his face. 'Have you seen a ghost?' she asked lightly. 'Prentice?'

'Mrs Robertson.' He laid great emphasis on the title. 'I didn't know you were Mrs Robertson.' Again the stress on the one word.

'It isn't a secret,' Dani told him. 'Didn't you know?' Of course he hadn't known. She bit her lip at the stupidity of her question and stared helplessly into the cold; green eyes.

'No.' The one word was a curt bark of sound. 'I don't make a practice of kissing married women... or are you a widow?' Dani wondered if she imagined the slight lift in his voice, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.

'No,' she said quietly. 'I'm not a widow.'

As though it was coming from a great distance, she heard the noise of the fete all around her; children shouting, the start of the music as the Morris dancers came out
to perform, the click of the wooden skittles as someone tried their hand at winning a pig, and the almost inaudible voice of Harry as he announced the finding of a purse on the grass.

None of it was important. Nothing was important but the stony face of the man in front of her, who was looking at her and through her as if she no longer existed for him. But she did! She was the girl he had kissed just a few minutes before, she had not changed in anyone's eyes but his.

What was he thinking? Dani wondered frantically. That she was a wife who went around kissing other men in her husband's absence? Yes, that was probably it. The contempt was there in his face, as was the disillusionment and the sudden weary knowledge that he had been wrong about her.

'Let me explain,' she began quietly.

'I don't want to hear!' Brusquely, arrogantly, he turned aside her faltered words. 'What time is the next performance? Three-quarters of an hour? I'll be back . . . Mrs Robertson.'

He turned and walked away, and Dani suddenly remembered the ridiculous hat and snatched it off, wanting to cry and biting her lip against the tears. With this man she could do nothing right.

Dani
eased her Ford Fiesta into its parking space at the side of the barn and locked it securely. Her puppets were in the back but they would just have to stay there for the night. The box in which they lay was heavy and cumbersome and she did not feel equal to the task of carrying it up her flight of stairs.

She could not remember the last time she had felt so tired, and equally she could not understand the reason for it. It wasn't an ordinary, yawning kind of tiredness, but a bone-deep weariness that was making her reluctant even to cross the yard and ascend her stairs.

'Dani!' Brian's voice. As she turned slowly around, he opened the window of the studio and leaned out. 'You want a cup of coffee?'

'Yes, please.' She had drunk innumerable cups of tea and lemonade and the thought of the company was more appealing than the offer of a drink. She checked that the boot of the car was locked, picked up her handbag from the roof and walked slowly into Brian's flat, kicking off her shoes and carrying them in her hand as soon as she crossed the threshold.

She did not know why on earth she had gone to the fete in such ridiculously high-heeled sandals. Because she had hoped to see Prentice McCulloch and impress him with her sophistication? Well, she had seen him, and now she did not want to think about him. She still felt bruised from the icy look of scorn with which he had withered her before
turning away, and from the miserable, stressed half hour that she had been forced to spend with him in the close confines of the play booth during the second performance of her puppets.

Dani knew that she never wanted to endure anything like that again. He had said nothing, absolutely nothing, but she had been made fully aware of his disapproval, and in the end her unhappiness had turned to a deep, burning anger. They should have kept to their original agreement to stay away from one another. It would have saved her from this latest hurtful incident.

Goodbye Prentice McCulloch, Dani thought as she padded across the wooden floor, settled herself down on Brian's couch-cum-bed and wriggled her feet blissfully into a sheepskin rug, nice to have met you. What was she going to do when they met again? No, she was just too tired to worry about that now.

'I've put the coffee on.' Brian came out of the kitchen and Dani looked up at him. 'My dear girl, you look as if you've been through a mincer. Was the fete that bad?'

'Not really.'

'Would you rather have a brandy now and your coffee later?'

'Oh, yes please.' Maybe she would find the strength to crawl upstairs to her own flat with some alcohol inside her.

She watched Brian as he went over to an old Welsh dresser where he kept his glasses and bottles. In old shorts that had obviously, at some stage, been jeans before he had cut the legs off and left the ends to fray, and a navy-blue T-shirt with the name of an American university emblazoned across it, he looked as powerful and as male as his half-brother. And yet Dani knew that she was not drawn to him in the way his half-brother attracted her.

But why? Brian's body was as well-proportioned and tanned as his brother's. Brian wore his clothes with the same casualness as Prentice. Brian was, in his way, just as attractive. Yet Dani tested her emotions and felt nothing for him. Why, oh why, did it have to be Prentice who stirred her blood and made her feel weak? Of ail men, why him?

'One large brandy coming up.' Brian turned with her glass in his hand. 'If the other organisers look like you, they'll be bringing them home on stretchers.'

'I think I must have a summer cold coming.' Dani knew there was no real reason for her tiredness, Many of the other women were older than she was and had done more than she had done. She held out her hand for the drink and was surprised when Brian did not give it to her immediately' but clasped her hand in both of his.

'You're cold!' he exclaimed. 'Here - I'll get a jacket.'

'Don't fuss, Brian.' And yet she appreciated his concern and felt safe and protected in his flat away from Prentice's anger. She took her glass and sipped at the brandy.

'Is there some kind of bug going around the school?' Brian fetched a big, woolly cardigan in bright red and an equally bright blue. Dani winced. 'Yes,' Brian sighed. 'I don't like it either. But it'll get you warm. You want something to eat? An omelette?'

Apart from a few sandwiches and a sausage roll, Dani had eaten nothing all day. She nodded.

'There is an ulterior motive to all this fatherly concern,' Brian called as he went into the kitchen. 'I want you to sit for me tomorrow and I don't want to have to tie you to a broom handle to keep you upright. You want cheese or ham in your omelette?'

'Cheese, please.'

'Yes, madam.' Brian popped his head around the door and grinned at her. 'Help yourself to another brandy,' he invited her. 'If you keel over, I can always pour you upstairs to bed.'

' You' re too kind!'

'Aren't I just?'

Dani did not have the energy to get up. She pulled the thick cardigan more closely around her and lifted her legs on to the couch, curling her feet under her and half sitting, half lying on the comfortable mattress. The brandy and the cardigan were warming her, and as the effect of the alcohol began to ease away the jumpy state of her nerves, she mused for a minute on the strangeness of human relationships.

She liked Brian. She thought he liked her. Yet she felt absolutely nothing for him beyond a kind of sisterly gratitude that he was looking after her. Neither was he attracted to her. He was too open to be able to hide his feelings and, besides that, Dani knew that he was more than halfway in love with his girlfriend Tricia, while still proclaiming his bachelor independence.

Prentice McCulloch was different. She felt she understood Brian, but his half-brother was an enigma to her. She suspected that Prentice hid his emotions behind that polite veneer of his and that perhaps few people would be allowed to see behind the mask to the man she thought lurked beneath it. She had been allowed peeps of a different Prentice. A man with the most beautiful smile she had ever seen, a man with a temper that could erupt suddenly and explosively, and a man who had treated a children's puppet show as if it had been as important as a big business deal.

Now she knew what it was like to be kissed by him, and she wondered if she would ever forget. She had felt physical warmth and an inner fire that he had lit with just one touch of his lips. Would his loving be as fierce and intense as his temper? Did he give to others the tenderness that he had shown her he possessed? Despite the cardigan and the brandy Dani shivered, recalling the ice in the green eyes after the revelation that she was Mrs Robertson. He would also make a cold, deadly and implacable enemy.

'Your brother found out that I was Mrs Robertson today,' she called to Brian.

'Oh yes?' He came to the kitchen door, a palette knife in one hand and a butcher's apron wrapped around his waist. 'What did he say?'

'Nothing much.' Dani fiddled with her brandy glass. 'But he didn't like it.'

'I don't suppose he did.' Brian went back into the kitchen but his voice still reached her. 'He doesn't like any divorced woman ... no matter what the reason. Because of his own mother, I suppose.'

'Yes.' Brian was only confirming what Dani had suspected. 'But I didn't actually tell him that I was divorced. I didn't get a chance.'

'You aren't wearing a wedding ring,' Brian called out. 'I expect he can put two and two together. Tell him straight next time you see him.'

'I don't see any point.' Dispiritedly, Dani gulped at her brandy.

'Don't you?' Brian came back to the door of the room. 'You can't avoid him, Dani. He's going to be a part of the village now.'

'Whose side are you on?' Dani demanded, aware that the alcohol and the tiredness were loosening her tongue. 'I didn't think you liked him either.' She finished her brandy with a defiant gulp and coughed.

'I didn't.' Bland agreement as Brian disappeared back into the kitchen. 'Just let me finish this and then I'll tell you . ? .'

Five minutes later, Dani accepted the fluffy-looking omelette and a fork and waved it in mock threat at him.

'You didn't like him,' she stated definitely. 'Have you changed your mind?'

'I suppose so,' Brian admitted. He got himself a beer and sat cross-legged on the floor at her feet. 'Remember that morning you found him sleeping here?'

'I've been meaning to ask you about that.'

'Yes? Well, he came over the night before just for a beer. He had . . .' Brian's face bore an impish, reminiscent smile,'. . . quite a few in the end. I got him to talk about his childhood and how he felt about the world in general, and . . .' Now the smile became rueful. ' . . . hell, I felt sorry for him. I think he's been lonely all his life. Lots of people always round him, but still lonely. He's an honest man and I like him for it. Apart from his father, I don't think he's ever been close to anyone. We got along well, better than I ever thought we could. Anyway . . .' Abruptly Brian reverted to Dani's original topic.
^!
. . . all you have to do when you see him next is to tell him that you aren't married any more. At least he'll know where he stands.'