The Dating Game. Avril Tremayne

salutary reminder to use him, not fall for him. In fact, she was going to look on it as a bonus lesson.

      But lesson time now appeared to be well and truly over for the evening, because since they’d taken up their respective positions, not a word had been spoken between them.

      Sarah had been consumed with the memory of that spectacular kiss, which explained her contribution to the heavy silence, but what was David’s story?

      He seemed to be in his own world, scowling as he drew. Was his morose silence a temperamental artist thing? If so, she hoped it wasn’t going to be the pattern for the next five weeks. Excessive silence was always so oppressive.

      ‘The Langman Portrait Prize,’ she said, latching on to the least controversial subject she could think of, just to hear a voice in the gloom. ‘Have you entered it before?’

      No answer. David simply kept sketching, and brooding.

      She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I guess you must have. Who did you paint last time?’

      He stopped, then. No, it wasn’t so much a stop as a start—an almost violent one—as he stared down at his sketch. ‘No,’ he said, but it had to be to himself because that was so far from an answer to her question as to be classified a non sequitur. Unless he was a question behind …?