SAVED FROM SIN
(aka Save My Soul From Sin)
Lindsay Armstrong
She'd rushed into marriage Clay Forrester had swept his starry-eyed Australian bride off her feet. He'd made her feel special--witty and rather daring--a person who existed only for him, when all along she'd existed only as his instrument of revenge! Melly's last words the night she'd confronted her father had been, "It's not true! Clay loves me. He does!" And yet she ran away. For three long years Melly had managed to evade the past--until the day she ran right into her husband and a situation she had to stay and face....
CHAPTER ONE MELISSA FORRESTER stepped out of the lift and surveyed the plush, thickly carpeted passage that stretched away to left and right like a river of rich, silky green. Elegant brass lamps glowed softly beside each panelled door, highlighting the expensive damask wallpaper, and a discreet, gold-lettered board indicated that numbers fifty to fifty-four were to the left and numbers fifty-five to fifty-nine were to the right. Melissa grimaced and turned right to head for number fifty-nine. She'd checked her credentials with the doorman downstairs, whose main concern had been that she wasn't selling anything, but then some demon of perversity had prompted her to start from the top floor of this apartment block rather than the first floor which she usually and methodically did. Perhaps, she mused, this urge to go about things upside down has something to do with the fact that it's a cold, wet, miserable day and not the kind of day one should have to be tramping the streets to make a living? 'Anyway,' she muttered to herself, 'it's not as if I'm going to get much of a response. You never do from these high-class addresses.' This was something she'd discovered over the last three months since she'd been working for a firm that conducted opinion polls on a wide range of products. It was far easier in the middle to lower class suburbs to find people prepared to sit down and answer a series of questions about toothpaste and cornflakes. In fact it was not only easier but it often led to the offer of a cup of tea and quite often she found herself the unwitting recipient of some unlikely confidences.
But in areas such as the one she was working today, it was not only hard to find people with the time or patience to go through the routine, it was not even all that easy to find people home. All the same as she approached number fifty-nine, she patted her conservative raincoat into place, checked that her shoes and tights weren't muddy or splashed, and smoothed her shining, wheat-fair hair. She was a girl of just below average height, on the thin side of slender perhaps, and with a trick of looking at the same time younger and older than her age, which was twenty-two. This curious fact about her was hard to pin down but most people took her for about nineteen - until they looked into her eyes. Then they stopped to wonder. But the bone structure of her small, oval face was beautiful, and most people found themselves strangely touched by her. Not that she herself gave her looks much thoughtâ€"although she was more smartly dressed today than her usual attire of jeans and an anorak because she'd found that to be better dressed gave her a better chance in more exclusive areas. Not, for that matter either, that she had a great choice of better clothes, but then she never saw the same people twice so it didn't matter. And she made sure her clip-board was hidden in her large bagâ€" another trick of the trade she'd discovered. Establish a presence first, her employer always said. Then get down to business ... She pressed the bell of number fifty-nine. There was no immediate response. She waited for about a minute, then pressed it again and heard a muffled voice saying, 'Coming!' And what sounded like muffled laughter. It was a further minute before the door opened and a girl stood there. An exquisite creature with a mane of tawny, disordered hair
and a pair of laughing green eyes. The other thing that distinguished her was that she was wearing a man's shirt clutched about her and half-buttoned up crookedly so that it wasn't hard to guess that she had nothing on beneath it. Melissa sighed inwardly, any doubts she'd had about it being one of those days banished. Days of polite and not so polite refusals for a variety of reasonsâ€"such as being caught in bed with a lover, she thought ironically. Well, perhaps that's being a bit hasty, she amended to herself, it is fairly early . . . but its none of my business anyway! All this passed through her mind speedily so there was only the briefest pause before she said with a practised smile. 'Hello. I'm Melissa Forrester and I hope I haven't disturbed you but I was wondering . ..' She stopped abruptly as the tawny-haired girl's mouth dropped open and a look of incredulous, stunned surprise widened her green eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then the other girl closed her mouth and licked her lips. 'I...' she hesitated. 'I don't know what to say.' Her voice was attractively husky but curiously lame and embarrassed sounding at the same time, and as if she realised it, she shut her eyes briefly and swallowed visibly. Then she turned her head and called softly over her shoulder, 'Mike ... I mean,' she winced, 'well ... you'd better come. There's a visitor for you.' 'No!' Melissa was galvanised into speech. 'You don't understand. I'm only here to ask you about...' But she didn't go on because a tall, dark-haired man had appeared behind the girl, and he too was buttoning up his shirt. But he stopped as his rather hard, surprisingly light grey eyes flickered
