Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

       CHAPTER TWO

      TRISS first met Cormack in the most romantic city in the world.

      She met him in Paris. In springtime.

      In fact, Cormack told her much later that he would never have written it as it had actually happened—it was so corny that audiences would never have believed it!

      But it did happen. Like a dream come true.

      Cormack had been commissioned to write a screenplay around a little-known book by F. Scott Fitzgerald which was set in France’s spectacular capital.

      For two months he isolated himself from everyone he knew and rented a roomy but fairly basic apartment at the top of an old building which had views of the city to die for.

      He mixed solely with the locals, and in eight weeks went from speaking a smattering of restaurant French to being passably fluent—with a very good line in colloquial insults!

      For the next two months he infiltrated the expatriate American community in order to get to grips with the characters he was supposed to be writing about. He was fortunate that the American Ambassador just happened to think he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and introduced Cormack to just about every influential American living in Paris!

      At the end of it all, his research completed, Cormack was mentally and physically exhausted, and sought a few days of winding down before he went back to his home in Malibu to write his screenplay.

      Sitting at a table outside a pavement café in the glory of springtime Paris, Cormack sipped at his demi-tasse of coffee and watched the world amble by, relieved to feel some of the tension ebb out of his body—rather like water being slowly let out of the bathtub!

      Immune to the polished sophistication of the native Frenchwomen, he was momentarily arrested by the vision of a woman so tall and so fragile that for a second he blinked, as if he had conjured up a creature from another world.

      She was dressed in simple black jeans and white T-shirt, with a matching black denim jacket slung casually over her shoulder. A huge-brimmed straw hat covered with masses of violets was crammed down over her head, and the vibrant colour of the flowers contrasted dramatically with the almost translucent paleness of her skin.

      She sat down at the table next to his, but did not appear to notice him—and Cormack was excellent at spotting women who merely pretended not to notice him—and he was fascinated by her abstracted air and her fey, understated beauty.

      She pulled a book out—in English, Cormack noted with pleasure—and opened it up, but he was aware that her eyes gazed sightlessly at the pages. When the waiter came to take her order, she struggled so delightfully to instruct him in French that Cormack was enchanted to play the role of translator—and within ten minutes he managed to charm his way through the barrier of suspicion she had erected enough to share her table with her and, eventually, to get her to agree to dine with him that evening.

      When he arrived to collect her at the hotel, she looked absolutely stunning, with her hair caught back in a soft French plait and wearing beautifully understated black jersey. Every Frenchman’s eyes narrowed lustfully at the sight of her, while Cormack could not remember feeling quite so elated at being out with a woman.

      They ate mussels and rare steak and drank robust red wine in a bistro on one of the tiny uphill streets which stood beneath the mighty shadows of the Notre Dame. He found her relative innocence entrancing and she, in turn, was captivated by his lazy manner, which did nothing to disguise his rather awesome intellect.

      They were on their second cup of coffee, with neither of them showing any particular desire to leave, when he asked her, very casually, ‘How much longer are you going to be in Paris?’

      At that moment Triss cursed her job, and the commitments which went with it. ‘I leave tomorrow,’ she told him reluctantly, her huge eyes gleaming gold as they reflected the candlelight.

      ‘Pity,’ was all he said.

      ‘Yes,’ she agreed, and left it at that. Maybe he had someone back in the States? A man like Cormack couldn’t possibly be single, for heaven’s sake!

      ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ he said suddenly, and Triss felt a fierce rush of regret that the evening had to end.

      Outside the restaurant, the moon was a gilded crescent decorating a star-splintered sky, and Cormack turned to her and said, ‘It’s a warm night. Shall we forget about the taxi and walk back to your hotel?’

      ‘Yes.’ She smiled instantly, then wondered if he was expecting to sleep with her. No way, she thought ardently as she stole a glance at that dark, craggy profile. However tempting she might find the prospect.

      They talked non-stop on the journey back-about politics and art and whether it was time to legislate against motor cars in major cities—this after a speeding vehicle narrowly missed careering into Cormack’s shins.

      He knew that she was a model—just as she knew that he was a scriptwriter—but in the heady anonymity of the blossom-strewn Parisian streets, their other lives seemed curiously unconnected.

      And unimportant.

      Some sixth sense warned Cormack to behave with the utmost propriety—indeed, he did not even attempt to kiss her as he left her at her hotel, though he sensed that that was what she wanted him to do more than anything else.

      And when he did kiss her, at the airport the following afternoon, the world spun on its axis. They both stared at each other in silent amazement afterwards, as if they could not quite believe what had happened, and when he asked her to visit him in Hollywood she shyly said ‘OK’ without really thinking about it.

      When Triss arrived back home in England, the episode seemed more like a dream than reality, and she waited to see what he would do next. If anything.

      He sent a book.

      Not flowers, but a novel he thought she might find ‘interesting’. He was the first man ever to acknowledge her mind rather than her model-girl looks, and Triss was absurdly flattered.

      She read the book, was provoked and stimulated by it, and wrote back to tell him so.

      He sent another. And another. And then a letter, with an accompanying open-ended air ticket, explaining that he was tied up with a film but that he would love to see her.

      Triss did not know which of them was more surprised when she turned up unannounced one day at his Malibu home, and he opened the front door to her wearing ink-splattered white jeans—and nothing else.

      There was a long pause.

      Well, Triss supposed that someone ought to fill the growing silence. ‘H-hello,’ she said nervously.

      He knew much more about her by then. He had asked his agent to come up with anything he happened to have on-a Triss Alexander and had been unprepared for the shock of realising that the sultry siren with the flaming mane of hair she had always kept tame in Paris was the fey, pale beauty who had captivated his imagination.

      ‘Hi,’ he said, very slowly. ‘So why didn’t you tell me you were a world-famous supermodel, Beatrice?’

      Triss had done her homework too. ‘And why didn’t you tell me that you were the enfant terrible of the film world?’

      He rubbed at his darkened chin thoughtfully, and Triss found herself simultaneously wondering whether he had shaved that morning and whether or not he intended