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.

The family had a hill farm in the border lands between England and Scotland made little money but her father loved it dearly.

He was happy getting up before the sun broke through, looking after stock, mending dry stone walls, injecting sheep against the dozen or so diseases they were prone to, doing all the kinds of job that needed doing on the farm at any time of the year.

Her father was a big man but though he was still tall, he now stooped. He had lived a hard life but it was the life he had chosen for himself and he never regretted it nor complained.

Sharon's mother never complained either nor gave any sign of resentment for toughness of her daily life. She worked as hard as her husband, indoors and out. She made the bread they ate, fed the hens and collected their eggs, killed them too and cooked them.

She washed the clothes and linen, ironed and baked and scrubbed and cleaned.

There was never any money and this had spurred Sharon on to achieve all she possibly could. She soon understood that if she wanted to make it in life, she had to get good grades at school. She had worked with intense concentration and got the results she needed. She had chosen banking as a career be ause she had not wanted to teach, go into law or engage in any other profession.

Her mother's brother who had been a local bank manager had encouraged her telling her that banking was the best career for girls these days.

So, she had come down to London, and got a first job here in the bank, riding with surprising speed as she realized what an aptitude she had for such a job.

She found it all so fascinating, the big bank buildings, the transfer and sale of shares, the electrifying nervous tension of the market whether good or bad, to any one who observed the day to day routine of the bank, banking might seem full but if they were in the middle of the action, then they would definitely feel the excitement and charged tension of it all.

As the years went by, she had grown away from her parents to some extent. She lived her father but she was never able to relax with him. He had tunnel vision, saw life only from one point of view.

She couldn't talk to him, he had no idea about the world she inhabited, the sort of life she lived and she was bored to death with the talk of sheep diseases a d the unending talk about the farm. They had nothing in common anymore except shared blood.

He wouldn't even accept her offer to help out financially even with the hard times they were facing. However, Sharon assured them that she could afford to send them money every month but he wouldn't accept it.

'You keep your money to yourself, girl' was all he said. After living for many years in the farm and grown used to the hard life of the farm, he had become so old fashioned and his pride would not allow him accept anything from anyone even his own daughter. He might have accepted it from a son but never from girl, definitely.

When Sharon had secretly sent some money to her mother, her father had asked her to send it back and her mother had sent it back accompanied with a short note asking Sharon not to do it again.

Joe Smith, her father had fixed ideas, fixed moral standards that he had learnt in his youth. He never watched TV, listened to the radio nor read newspaper. Sharon knew that her father would be shocked if he knew that she had slept with Bryan. He probably thought that she was still a virgin at twenty six, waiting for the right man to come along before she married.

Her mother, Jane Smith was a gentle, tolerant woman but she had never supported Sharon against her father in the past and Sharon didn't think that she ever would.

Jane was the type of woman who said, 'My husband, right or wrong....' and stuck to it.

Nearly sixty now, she looked older, the auburn hair she had passed on to her daughter had turned grey. Her face had too many lines and she seemed to be tired always.

Sharon saw the way, long hours of hard work was turning her mother older and weaker and anytime she went home, it was worse and she had to bite her tongue to prevent her from saying anything to her father because her interference always upset her mother and never achieved anything.

The truth was that her parents had shared everything all through their marriage. There was a deep quiet live between them that never changed and never would.

So it was better for her to go home, very infrequently, she could hold her tongue if she didn't see them always.

Coming back to the present where she was speaking to David about the kind of trip she would have loved to have.

'I've always thought that I'd love to spend Christmas somewhere romantic like Vienna.

'We shall. Why don't you? David said. 'I'd love to go to Vienna for Christmas. Why don't we go together?'

She gave him a startled look and laughed. 'It would be magical, wouldn't it?' She didn't take him serious. She thought that like her, he was just fantasizing, daydreaming.

She had seen a program on TV the other day and had been enchanted by its magnificent walls and everything about it.

'Let's do it!' he said and she suddenly realised that he meant it.

He met her eyes, his coaxing, 'I hate Christmas on my own, friends invite me but family Christmas makes me feel very melancholic indeed. Staying in the hotel is even worse, all that fake jollity and gaudy paper hats, waiters dressed up like father Christmas! But you and me...we both know the score we're just good friends, no complications on either side. So what do you say, Sharon? Will you come?'

There was something so wistful about his tone, she hesitated then threw caution to the winds and nodded recklessly. 'Okay, let's do it!'

They sat and planned it there and then and Sharon went to book the trip the following day. They would fly three days before Christmas and come back a week later, stay in one of the best hotels in Vienna. They were both excited- It brightened the wintery days that followed, like candles burning in a dark place.

But that was before it dawned on her that she had missed two periods. She hadn't bothered so much about the lateness of the first one. She had never had regular periods but she had never gone two months before and as the days went by and nothing happened, she became scared.

What if... but it couldn't be! She had told Bryan that she had taken no precautions and she was sure he had taken the necessary precautions. He had promised that he would take care of it and she had left it in his hands. So she couldn't be going to have his baby.

Two periods missed. She couldn't be going to have Bryan's baby. It was not possible. She was afraid to go to her doctor. She did not know what he would say

Because if it was not what she suspected, which she couldn't even voice aloud to herself even in the privacy of her room so that it would not become reality, then what was wrong with her?

Her doctor, was stuffy middle aged man who didn't look like he would be sympathetic was not the type of person she could go to and tell that she thought that she might be pregnant.

So, she went to the chemist and bought a do - it - yourself pregnancy test. The procedure was complicated but she knew that she wouldn't rest until she found out. She could not wait till the next day but did it that evening.

The result was positive. She stood looking at it with white face and shadowy eyes. She was carrying, Bryan's baby. Her stomach twisted in protest and dismay.

Oh, how had she been so wreckless and stupid? This was a complication' and consequence she had not been expecting. She had kept telling herself that as much as she regretted losing her head that way that night in Rome, at least, she didn't have to bother about being pregnant. How could she have expected to be one in a million that the precaution did not work on?'

In the first shock of realization, she did not know what to do. Her first thought was to have an abortion the sooner , the better. But she was afraid and undecided.

She couldn't make up her mind about something so terrifying and drastic in such a hurry. She needed time to think.

Should she have the child but let it be adopted? Oh but the very thought of going through a pregnancy while working in the bank,and everyone knowing what was happening to her body made her feel sick especially since it meant that Bryan would know as well.

She had no intention of telling him until she couldn't avoid it. This was her body, the decision had to be hers. He had no rights on the baby at all, she told herself bitterly. Not after the way he had behaved.

Sharon wondered if she was jinxed and could not be happy in any relationship.

Her first relationship had been a flop

Though they had gone their separate ways through mutual consent, the second had been a very bitter experience. She had been with him for some years and had thought that they were both in love. At least that the feelings she had for him was reciprocated. She had not even read the signs because she had been blinded by her love for him that when it happened, she had felt numb. She could not believe that it was happening to her.

'Sharon, I have tried to keep this relationship going for sometime now but it seems not to be working', he had said.

Sharon had not understood what he meant.

'Kept the relationship going? Not working? What do you mean?'

'I mean that I have found someone I know you be my soul mate. With her, I feel happy and complete'. Sharon felt as though a punch had been delivered to her stomach.

'You didn't feel happy with me nor complete?'

'Sharon don't be like this. I could have left without saying anything to you and you would have found out yourself through someone else but I value you and that is why I'd rather you heard it from me'.

'You still have not answered my question. Didn't you feel happy nor complete with me?'

'It is not the same thing. I thought I had it all with you though I kept feeling that something was missing. But with Melissa, I do not feel any emptiness of any sort in any part of my life'.

'But if you really felt that way, what have we been doing all this while? You had delibrately been using me to while away the time while you waited for her to accept you? I was just a stop by before you got to your destination isn't it?'

'It is not that way'.

'Ehat way is it then?'

'I had hoped to spare you but you seem to want to hear it all. Alright here goes. I have not really loved you. I thought that I could build on what we had but it was not working like I said earlier but with Melissa, it was love at first sight and the attraction had been instant. We share a chemistry that is beyond anything I can describe. It is better felt than imagined. Being someone with an active conscience, I knew that I couldn't go on deceiving you or allow you find this out yourself', he said looking at her apologetically.

'Who is she, this Melissa?'

She is the daughter of the senator. We have been out a few times and I realized that I wanted permanence with her. We have actually started planning our wedding. The father will take care of everything'.

'Are you talking about that Melissa? Melissa Thrumball?', she asked, realization dawning on her.

'The very same', he did happy that he had got it off his chest.

'I can't believe that you ate marrying her because her parents are rich and mine are just poor farmers. We could work out our future together. We have a bright future ahead of is and we can make our own way rather than depend on others or on their money'.

'It is not the money. Okay, the money is an added incentive but I loved her first before realizing who she was', he had said defensively but Sharon had known that it was mainly because of the money and the fame and connection, such a relationship would get him that had made him break up with her for Melissa.

She had given her heart to that relationship. She had waited for years to be made his wife but he never got around to it but the girl he saw in just a couple of weeks and they were already going through wedding plans.

She had not been a le to go into any other relationship after that. It had hurt her deeply. She could not bring herself to trust any man enough to give her heart and now she who thought she despised Bryan when he came along had been foolish and reckless enough to sell her pride and allow him to have her and now she had to bear the consequences alone. It was just not fair. Why must the woman always pay? What about the man? she wailed inwardly.

She was still wondering if she was jinxed and how her parents, her puritan parents would react to the news of her pregnancy when she fell into a troubled sleep.