'What do you think I am?' Lissa asked angrily. 'Do you think I wanted him to kiss me?'

Chris laughed shortly. 'So you didn't fancy him? Well, I didn't imagine you had, but you never know with women.' There was a cold twist to his mouth. 'Even girls like you can fall for a good line, and Ferrier certainly has a great line.'

Lissa frowned, disliking the cynical gleam in Chris's eyes. 'Well, I didn't.' She was lying and she knew it. She had not found Luc Ferrier's kisses distasteful. What's happening to me? she thought. She was meeting Chris's eyes and showing nothing of her secret thoughts, and her own ability to deceive was very disturbing.

'In future keep right out of his way,' Chris told her. 'If he tries it on again let me know and the boys will sort him out.'

Lissa shivered at the way Chris said that, the bright gleam of his eyes as he spoke.

As she walked back through to the foyer she met Rebecca. Lissa knew who had told Chris that she had gone off with Luc Ferrier. She met Rebecca's cold smile with an unsmiling stare of her own.

Pierre was in a teasing mood. 'I've had a request,' he told her. 'In fact, I've had dozens, for you to do the little song I wrote you. So how about it?'

Lissa flushed. 'I…'

'Come on, Liss,' he grunted. 'Either you want to be a professional or you don't. The people loved that song. They loved your dress, too. It's time you made up your mind whether you're going to give the people what they want or get out and let someone else do it.'

'Someone else meaning Jo-Jo,' she suggested, half smiling.

'Whatever,' Pierre said flatly. 'Chris wants you and you could be much better than you are, if only you'd do it the way the people want it.'

It wasn't the first time Pierre had said as much. She looked at him uncertainly. 'I feel shy when I sing it,' she muttered.

'Sure,' Pierre nodded, 'I know that. But you can sing it, Liss. All you have to do is grow up, for God's sake.' He put a thin arm round her shoulders in a brotherly hug, smiling. 'You were a sweet little kid, but now you're a woman. Start acting like one.'

There was so much she could say to that that the words all jammed up inside her head. She was frightened of changing, of becoming a full adult, and she knew it. She looked up into Pierre 's round dark eyes and smiled pleadingly at him.

He gave her an encouraging nod. 'Going to try, baby?'

Lissa drew a deep breath and nodded. 'That's my girl!' Pierre grinned, hugging her again.

They went over the song a dozen times before he was satisfied with the way she was singing it. Lissa felt the provocative, ambiguous words sinking into her mind. They disturbed her even more now. Every time she sang them she thought about Luc Ferrier and her pulses raced. Pierre gave her an odd look when she was going.

'You're coming on,' he told her, grinning, and she wasn't sure what he meant by that, but knew she didn't want to know.

Chris gave her a sharp look as he saw her in the black dress that evening. 'I thought you preferred not to wear it,' he said with unhidden suspicion.

Pierre came up and winked at him. 'I talked her into it. The fans were demanding another look at it.'

Chris relaxed. 'Went down well, didn't it? I know. I got told as much over and over again.'

When Liss walked out into the spotlight her eyes involuntarily slid to the table where Luc usually sat and widened in surprise as she saw he was not alone. One of the other guests sat with him, Lissa had seen her several times before; she was one of the wives whose husband rarely left the gaming rooms. Luc was smiling into the woman's eyes and listening to whatever she was saying to him. The woman lifted her glass and sipped, fluttering her lashes at him over the edge of the glass.

She was a very attractive woman, Lissa recognised, suntanned, slim, her low red dress provocative.

Lissa felt a strange stab of anger and began to sing. She did not look at Luc again, but she sang as she had never sung before, using the purring voice she had heard Pierre use as he tried to get her to sing as he wanted.

It was nothing but mimicry. She remembered the teasing looks Pierre had given her as he sang certain lines and looked round the audience in the same way, smiling. She heard the laughter start, as it had started the first time she sang the song. She paused where Pierre had paused, smiled where he had smiled, and her slender body moved in the sinuous gestures Pierre had used as he sang.

She felt Pierre 's excited look, saw his grin out of the side of her eye. As she ended, the audience erupted in whistles and shouts, as they had before. 'More, more!' they yelled. Pierre bent forward and whispered: 'Sing it again.'

Lissa looked at him in startled disbelief. She had never sung a song twice before. Pierre nodded at her vigorously and struck up the bars which opened the song.

The audience clapped enthusiastically and Lissa, off balance, turned to launch into the song again. She felt a movement at the back of the room and saw Chris standing there. He had taken the red carnation from his buttonhole and held it in his fingers. He was shredding it absently, staring fixedly at her.

Something inside her hardened. She turned her eyes back to the grinning audience and began to sing.

The applause, the enthusiasm, had melted her inhibitions. She was relaxed, leaning on the piano, smiling. In the clinging black dress she suddenly had a new sophistication and was aware of it. Her old self was gone. She was no longer a little girl, Pierre had reminded her; she was a woman, and it was a woman singing, breathing out the witty lines, glancing past the smiling faces in the audience as though she invited an interest from them which in the past she would have run from like a terrified child.

She did not even look towards Luc's table. Walking off in a storm of applause, she found Chris waiting for her. His eyes had an odd harsh glitter in them.

Lissa looked at him defiantly, her mouth level.

Chris stared and didn't say anything, but his eyes were trying to read hers.

Lissa walked past him and went through the club to the foyer. She got Fortune from the desk clerk and took him out into the warm still night.

She could not sleep after that. She felt wrung and yet elated, her mind confused with the rush of too many impressions. She watched the dog's white coat ahead of her and heard the sigh of the sea far off on the beach. The stars pierced the deep blue mantle of the sky, brighter than steel, sharper than knives. She stared up at them as she walked and shivered.

She would not think about the odd painful emotion she had felt before she began to sing.

She wouldn't think at all. She walked because her mind was far too wide awake for sleep and her body was restless and taut.

When she found herself on the edge of the pale beach she stood there watching the waves sigh up on to the sands. The dog ran down towards them, kicking up sand with his paws, printing the immaculate silvery beach with his marks.

The sound of movement behind her did not surprise her. She had known he was coming for at least a minute. She had been standing there, listening to his footsteps and shuddering like someone with a chill.

He came up behind her and stood there, breathing. Lissa stared at the sky, the sea, the silvery sands.

His hands touched her arms, slid caressingly down them, the cool brush of his fingers making her skin leap with awareness.

He moved closer, turning her to face him. She stood with lifted head and hard, wide eyes watching him as he watched her.

'Well, well, well,' he murmured. 'You are the most surprising creature, aren't you? What got into you tonight?'

She did not bother to reply. The peculiar anger inside her wouldn't let her speak.

His fingers ran down her check. He softly touched her folded lips with one of them gently tracing the warm moulded shape of her mouth. 'Why so silent?'