Sharon woke up the next morning with a splitting Headache and a temperature, so she didn't have to lie to David when she called him at home.

'I flew home a night early, I'm coming down with the flu, started throwing up and it's so hateful being I'll in hotels. I didn't miss any of the conference though, just the ball and Bryan is there to cover everytime that does happen.

David was sympathetic. 'Don't worry about it. I think that you did the right thing. I hate being I'll in hotels myself'.

'How are you? Feeling any better?' she asked, reminded that he had been ill before they left. In fact that was the reason she had had to go to the conference with Bryan in the first place. How much different she would have felt today if he had gone with her. She broke off a sigh Incase he heard it and started asking questions.

I'll be back on Monday. I'm okay', he said. 'Maybe you caught the same bug I had? I hope I didn't give it to you. Have you got a headache?'

'Frightful one'. But she suspected it wasn't flu that was making her head ache, although since she had been sick several times that day, she knew now that it wasn't just her shamed revulsion over letting Bryan make love to her that had made her throw up the morning after when she had woken up to find him gone,leaving just a curt note behind.

'High temperature? Thirsty? Shivery?' David asked.

'All that's.

'It sounds like what I had. Well, one comfort is that it doesn't last long. Stay in bed and call a doctor, and don't come to work until you are one Hundred percent again'.

'I won't David. I left my conference notes with Bryan. He will give them to you if you want them urgently but it would be easier for you read them after they had been typed up'.

'Forget about work, Sharon's, David told her. 'Just concentrate on getting well.

By evening, she felt terrible. It was definitely flu and she stayed in bed, shi eating under a thick winter duvet, dosed herself with aspirin and drank alot of squash and orange juice and water. She didn't eat at all, couldn't keep anything down.

When she went back to work, she had lost weight and looked pale. David gave her a concerned look as she stepped into his office.

'You have been ill. You look terrible'.

She laughed. 'Thank you, David. You're so flattering. 'Did Bryan give you my conference notes? Have they been typed up?'

'Yes, I've skimmed through them'. He talked about some of the topics which had been discussed at the conference, asked her some questions, then said, 'Guess who came into the office yesterday?'.

Blankly, she said,'Who?'

'Gerhard', David said laughing. 'He told me he'd run into you at the conference. He's in London with a team from the German bank' to hold talks with the Bank of England. We are having Lunch later this week- I told him that I'd bring you along if you were back at work. Ate you free on Thursday?'

'I think so. I'll have to checky diary though, I'll let you know'.

She wasn't sure that she ever wanted to see Gerhard again. Seeing him now would always remind her of what happened at the conference

It really wasn't his fault but just maybe if they had not been discussing him and his intention towards her, Bryan would have gone straight to his room and she to hers and there would have been no incident where she would have been fighting to prove his gentlemanliness which had led to her tripping and falling and Bryan with her and how they had ended up in bed.

She sighed silently. It was all just so stupid. How could she ever forget what happened at the conference when she worked here, under the same roof with Bryan and could hardly a oud seeing him everyday.

If she was sceptical about seeing Gerhard because of the things she considered the shameful events at the conference, then she should perhaps stop working at the bank so that she would also avoid seeing Bryan who was the perpetrator and the person who had kept treating her with remoteness and condescension since after that night.

And why should she be so unfair to Gerhard? It wasn't his fault. Any of it. He didn't even know what had happened. Nobody did. Red colour stained her cheeks. She hoped nobody ever would.

She went into her office to look at her diary and sat behind her desk, staring at nothing, wondering how she was going to feel when she finally saw Bryan again.

The phone rang. It was one of their investment managers, sounding gloomy. 'Sharon, I'm having issues with one of our clients. He is threatening to take his account away because he is not satisfied with the way I am managing his money. Could you speak to him? Have lunch with the two of us sometime this week?'

She looked at her diary again and sighed. 'Okay, Peter. Friday is free. Who's he again?'

'He's Wright'.

'Okay send me his file together with all the shares you've bought for him and how they are doing. I suppose we're making money for him?'

Peter drooled apologetically. ' I have had one or two strokes of bad lucks.You remember that investment we were trying to talk the clients into buying in the fall which fell through not long afterwards, I took some of that for him'.

Sharon was sad. That had been their mistake. They should never have got into it but it had looked okay in the face of it.

'Why didn't you get rid of the shares for him, switch into something else?'

'You know that is not our policy. David likes us to ride the ups and downs instead of buying and selling. That was my instruction and I stuck to it'.'But Peter there are exceptions to the rule one of which is when a company is being run by crooks. And the company manager absconded with so much finds. Look fix the lunch for me t week and not this anymore so that it would give me more time to make some rearrangements'.

And Peter thanked her and rang off.

After the call, Sharon went over the Japanese stock market, observing all the shares they held and how they were doing. She had an appointment with a Japanese client that afternoon and wanted to know what she was talking about when she met him.

She was coming out of the beautiful building which housed the bank at Lunch time when she saw Bryan strolling towards her from the taxi that had just dropped him.

He looked at her and in his head, he thought, 'Look at the lady who made him feel less than what he was. She tries to put me down at all times but she does not know that I cannot be out down. I am like a mountain that cannot be shaken. Instead of allowing myself be put down by the likes of her, I shall cease to be Bryan Ferdinand. She reported sick but there is no sign of the I'll health in her. She looks as cool and as beautiful as ever and I want her desperately but I'll be damned if I'd let her know after hurting my feelings at every turn,by flinching away from me, from my touch but she had screamed with pleasure while I made love to her and had even given me live bites that had kept reminding me of that night. Perhaps she had imagined she was with someone else? Like that German? Or David? She had allowed me near her only because she was very lonely and I happened to be the one available at the time? Damn her!

She held on tightly on the railings of the staircase for support as they met on the steps, wondering the rude and cynical word he would have for her that afternoon as her heart lurched as she saw him and she was not disappointed.

He nodded, 'Back at work then? his face dark and cool.

'Yes'.

'David saw it was the flu'. His sardonic tone indicated that he didn't believe it.

She lifted her chin. 'Yes, that's right'. Her own tone told him that she didn't care what he believed.

His mouth twisted. 'But now you're normal'.

Anyone else overhearing them would have taken what he was saying at face value but Sharon heard the undertone. The sarcasm, the distaste and she flinched from it.

'Yes', she said as she started bitterly into his black eyes.

'I know you'll be pleased to hear how much David kept saying that he missed you', he drawled. 'They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, didn't they? So your bout of flu was brilliantly timed, obviously'.

She didn't answer, her face stiff, just walked away, blinded to the traffic and confusion of London as she moved.

She hadn't seen him for over a week but he had t been out of her mind all that time and just now as they talked, she had kept looking at him, looking away, unable to stop looking back, swinging wildly all the time between extremes of feeling which left her giddy.

Absence had had a drastic effect on her heart, it seemed.She wished to God it hadn't.

That brief encounter on the steps outside the bank would make it easier next time she saw him, though. She hoped.

In fact, she saw him again the next morning in David's office. There were several of the bank directors there. Bryan and Sharon were able to ignore each other without it seeming strange.

Nobody else seemed to notice the chill in the air whenever they spoke to each other, either. Al though it seemed so obvious to Sharon. O my David picked up on it and mentioned it later in private,gently chiding her.

'What is wrong with you and Bryan? I had hoped you two would get better by now than you obviously do. Didn't you hit it off while you were in Rome? I thought that being thrown together like that might have broken the ice between you too but the way you talk to each other lately, the ice seem thicker than ever'.

Flushed and furious with herself for letting David glimpse her feelings, she said simply, 'I'm sorry if it's that obvious. I always try to be polite'.

'Oh, Polite, Yes. But I know you both, I don't need you to draw diagrams. Everytime the two of you are in the same room,the temperature goes down with a thump. You know my plans for him Sharon, one day, he'll be sitting on my chair. Try to make friends with him'.

She forced a pretense of laughter. 'Good heavens, David, stop talking as if you're ninety three! unless you are planning to retire at fifty. Bryan isn't going to take over for a long, long time'.

Then their eyes met and she frowned, struck by a new idea.

'You aren't planning to retire, are you?' That prospect appalled her. David gone. Bryan in his place? She would have to leave the bank!

'I'm certainly not planning anything if the kind but you never know what the future holds, do you? If I had been told that my wife would be taken from me so soon, I'd never have believed it. She was so you g and full of life. She never had a terminal sickness. The future is uncertain. So make friends with Bryan, Sharon'.

Sharon looked closely at him. Hope he was not trying to say something to her.

'You are okay David, aren't you?'

'I am but I am asking this of you. I am disturbed about your hostile attitude towards each other and I want you both to be amicable towards each other. That's only what I am trying to say'.

'It was too late for that, David, Sharon thought grimly. She could not even consider that. He had done alot to wreck her life and peace. She and Bryan were never going to be friends. They might have tried at it had the conference not happened but it had and they had briefly been lovers, now they were enemies and it would take a miracle to change it to be otherwise.

Sharon was working late one November night and the month was a grey and drizzly month in the year.

Everyone else had gone home but she had to finish some research on a new investment programme they were working out for a big pension fund.

She stopped to massage her eyes, Chinese fashion, her elbow on the desk and her palms pressed into her eyes, shutting out light and easing the strain on the iris, at the same time, letting her mind go blank. When she was very tired, this often helped to revitalize her for a while.

She was totally unaware of Bryan's approach until he touched her shoulder.

Then she whirled round, her gree eyes in shock.

'Oh! It's you. Don't creep up to me like that. You nearly made my heart stop'

'Snd we wouldn't want that, would we?' he said dryly and she felt herself flush. You have to be on your toes when you talked to him, he used double meanings like thorns under the skin.She let that one go by without comment.

'Why are you still working? You've got a long flight tomorrow, you should get an early night'.

'I shall', he said I'm just off but I saw your light on and came to say goodbye. I'm sure you will be relieved to see me go'.

She would and yet she already felt a grey depression settling down over her like a mist of winter. She was going to miss him badly but she wasn't admitting that to him before he made fun of her and her emotions.

One black brow curved sardonically. 'No comment? Well none needed bit I shall miss the Christmas office party and all the fun and games under the mistletoe which I understand goes on.....'

He bent very fast, before she had time to realise what he intended,and kissed her, his lips hot, compelling, waking the sleeping passion always curled inside her body whenever he was near.

It only lasted a moment then he stood up breathing thickly, darkly flushed, his eyes hostile.

'You can slap my face when I get back! Don't marry David while I am away or you would be sorry you did', he said and walked out, leaving her trembling, frustrated, on the point of tears.

It seemed to rain everyday after he was gone.She couldn't get him out of her mind especially at night, in her bed, when erotic fantasies about him kept her awake for hours.

Those nights, she would remember the taste of his lips, the smell of his sweat, of his cologne, his hard masculine body.

She would remember how he moved inside her and with her and she would moan wanting him terribly. Then her hands would creep to her most intimate parts and while still thinking about him and the way he loved her in bed, she would satisfy herself and only then would she be able to fall asleep.

She had experienced loneliness but this time it was loneliness with a plus. This was really what it felt like to be lonely.

It rain most everyday that one day, looking out the window, David commented, 'Lucky Bryan, of it weren't for the exhausting flight, I'd have gone myself but I couldn't face the journey'.

'I've never been to Australia's, Sharon said wistfully.

'You should have said something and maybe the both of you could have gone.

'I didn't want to', she erupted and then catching David's eye, she flushed. 'Well, you wouldn't want both of us gone at the same time, would you?'

David frowned. 'That's true but I just realized that you can't stand him, can you? Odd, I find him likeable, a brilliant mind too, very shrewd. I wonder why you don't like him?'

'I can't like everyone!' she protested,then tried to change the topic. 'Whether like this makes you want to take a holiday somewhere hit and sunny, doesn't it? The Caribbean would be nice or Florida'.

'What about Germany?' David said and she gave him a startled look.

'Germany? That's not sunny. I remember Gerhard telling me about winters there when he was a child. How he skied to school and went skating on frozen lakes'.

'Yes, I know but Gerhard did invite us to visit the German bank and the diary is pretty empty for the start of December'.

Sharon thought about it, chewing the end of a pen. 'Both of us?'

David looked pretty mischievous. 'I think Gerhard would expect you to be there, don't you?'

Sharon smiled. 'I don't know what you mean!'

'Oh yes, you do, he fancies you', David lifted his eyebrows. 'Oh come on, you like him!'

'Of course I do'.And it was true that the first ten days in the month of December was a blank space in her diary. Layer, there would be alot of Christmas Parties both private ones and office parties.

'Abd while we're over there, we could do some Christmas shopping's, David said cheerfully. 'After we've had our discussion with Gerhard in the German bank, we'd stay for a couple of days and go to one of the wonderful Christmas fairs they have in Germany, this time of the year'.

'Yes, that would be fun'.

'I suppose you'd be spending Christmas with your family as usual?' David asked.

'I'm not sure. I often go home for Christmas as well as a week in the summer. It's much to far to go home at the weekends. I'd no sooner get there than I'd be ony way back. I always love to have a week at least before I go'.

'Do they come to London often? Where do they go for their holidays?' David was always interested in other people's lives. It was one thing about him that made him a good boss and a good friend.

Sharon sighed. 'My father hasn't had a day off in years. He works three hundred and sixty five days a year on the farm and so does my mother

Sharon had kept trying to convince her parents to come away with her to some exotic place for a holiday but they wouldn't bulge and it had never happened as a result.