Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick
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point,’ he murmured. ‘We didn’t actually do a lot of talking, did we, Triss?’
To her fury, Triss found herself blushing. She had meant that both her and Cormack’s heavy work schedules had conflicted, giving them very little free time with each other, but Cormack had obviously misinterpreted her meaning. Deliberately? she wondered. She lifted her chin. ‘No,’ she answered, sounding surprisingly cool. ‘We didn’t.’
His eyes glittered at her. ‘Anyway, as I recall, Beatrice, you didn’t find the parties completely boring. You enjoyed dressing up to the nines so that the whole room went silent as you walked in. Didn’t you?’ he finished softly.
‘I needed to look my best, yes,’ she argued defensively. ‘Because I wanted to make sure that I had enough work. And my agent always told me to go out with the thought that people were going to judge me by my appearance. If you will remember, those were the days before it became acceptable for models to grunge around in public wearing their oldest clothes with their hair scraped back into an elastic band. And besides, you liked me to dress up, Cormack—don’t deny that.’
‘Yes, I did like it.’ He nodded, his face reflective. ‘Your beauty astonished me, if you must know. I was as dazzled as the rest of them. When you pulled out all the stops to really dress up, I could hardly believe that you were with me—the upstart from Belfast!’
‘Like a trophy on your arm, you mean?’ she challenged drily. ‘Is that it?’
He shook his head so that the ebony waves gleamed as blackly as a raven’s wing, but his blue eyes were cold—icy-cold, like a frozen sea. ‘I’m not the kind of man who needs a beautiful woman to define him, Beatrice. You were there because I liked you—no other reason.’
And now? Triss swallowed, wondering when exactly they had stopped liking one another. She forced down another mouthful of tea, then looked directly into that strong, vibrant face which exuded so much earthy sensuality. ‘You’re still very laid-back, aren’t you, Cormack?’ she said.
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I would have thought that most men would have burst in here demanding to know just why they were here. Not sat there calmly drinking tea like a civilised stranger.’
‘We’re neither civilised, nor strangers. Not really—are we, Triss?’ His eyes glittered with an unspoken message of remembered desire, and Triss had to fiercely blot out the memory of lying naked in Cormack’s bed while he taught her everything he knew about the art of lovemaking.
And it had shocked as well as thrilled her to discover just how much he did know.
‘As to what most men would do—well, that doesn’t really concern me. All I know is that the woman I lived with, who disappeared so conclusively from my life after a night of the most spectacular sex I’ve ever experienced—’
Triss clapped her cool palms up to her flaming cheeks. ‘Cormack, don’t—’
‘Don’t what? Don’t tell the truth?’ he demanded. ‘Why? Does it disturb you so much?’ He smiled, but Triss could detect the anger which burned slowly behind the appearance of humour. ‘Why should she then send me a message—quite out of the blue—asking me to meet her at some God-forsaken place on the southern coast of England?’
‘Was it difficult to arrange?’
He shot her a narrow-eyed look. ‘I’ve reached the stage in my career where very little is difficult to arrange.’
It suddenly occurred to her that she had simply expected him to drop everything and just come to her.
And he had! Hope sprang to life in her heart, like the first snowdrop after the austerity of winter. If she asked him, might he answer all her hopes and dreams and prayers and say that he had missed her? Triss took her courage in both hands and said, ‘And why did you come so readily?’
He smiled. ‘I’m intrigued as to why you asked me, if you must know, Triss. And the sensation of being intrigued these days is so rare that I feel honour-bound to savour every moment.’
Disappointment lanced through her, but somehow she managed to keep her features neutral. ‘How jaded you sound, Cormack!’ she observed critically. ‘And how cynical!’
His eyes glittered like blue ice. ‘That’s the price you pay for success, sweetheart.’
‘Are you after the sympathy vote?’ she demanded. ‘Because you won’t get it from me, you know!’
‘I’m not after anything,’ he told her pointedly.
‘You were the one who invited me here, so you, presumably, are the one who is after something. I’m still waiting for you to tell me what it is.’
‘And you don’t seem to be in any hurry to find out,’ she observed in surprise, wondering why everything felt as though it was going horribly wrong.
‘I’m a patient man.’ He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes, and for the first time since she had decided to contact him Triss felt a whisper of fear skittering down the length of her spine.
‘Are you?’ she asked him in a low voice. ‘You must have changed, then, Cormack.’
‘We all change, Triss. It’s inevitable—it’s part of life and of growth. Without change, we stagnate and die.’
And suddenly it was more than just reluctance to tell him about Simon; it was fear.
For Cormack was fundamentally a man of morals—an honourable man.
Once, in a rare, confiding moment, he had told her that in the past he had fallen for the wife of one of his greatest friends—something which he had despised himself for doing. He had convinced himself that he had kept his affection secret, but the woman must have guessed—or maybe it had been what she had been praying for herself.
She had waited until her husband was away on a trip, and then had plotted her grand seduction. She had crept into Cormack’s bed late one night, knowing he was at a party, and lain in wait for him in all her glorious golden nakedness.
Triss remembered the look of intense strain etched on his face as he had described how he had quietly asked the woman to leave.
‘But wasn’t it tempting—to let her stay?’ Triss had asked him breathlessly.
Lying next to her in bed, looking so bronzed and so gorgeous, Cormack had given her a look which had made her feel terribly young and terribly naive. ‘Of course it was tempting,’ he had answered quietly. ‘The forbidden always is. But friendship rates highly in my book. Certainly above lust.’
‘Lust?’ she had queried, appalled. ‘Not love?’ He had smiled coldly. ‘How could it be love?’ he asked her. ‘To love someone you have to get to know them properly—and you certainly can’t do that while they are married to someone else.’
Strange that she should remember that conversation now, thought Triss—especially after all this time. Was some self-protective instinct reminding her of just how ruthless and cold Cormack could be when he chose?
Triss had eyes which were sometimes green and sometimes gold—depending on the light, or how she happened to be feeling at the time. In her modelling days she had acquired the skill of being able to make her face reflect whichever mood the art director was searching for, but these days she was badly out of practice.
She let her heavy lids drop, like a demure Victorian heroine, for fear that Cormack’s intelligent, searching eyes would guess at more than she wanted him to.
‘So tell me, have you changed, sweetheart?’ he queried in that lilting Irish accent which managed to be soft and sweet and hard and sexy all at the same time.
‘I suppose I must have done,’ answered Triss slowly, for she certainly could not have imagined taking motherhood so much in her stride when she was living with Cormack.
In fact, when she thought