Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick
expression on his face filled Triss with a sinking feeling of dread.
For there was nothing but an icy coldness there—a look as unlike Cormack as she had ever seen. It was, she realised, the death of all his feeling for her—other than scorn and dislike.
And Triss knew that she had paid the highest price possible for exacting her revenge on Cormack. Because if ever she had harboured any secret hopes of getting him back she could see from his face that any such hopes were futile...
The first part of the journey back to St Fiacre’s was conducted in a terse, bitter silence. They took Triss’s car but Cormack drove—her hands were shaking too much for her even to be able to consider driving.
‘But what about your motorbike?’ she had asked him back at the cottage. ‘We can’t just leave it here.’
His mouth had curved into a disdainful smile. ‘I have no intention of just leaving it here. I’ll arrange to have it collected and delivered to your’ house.’
’M-my house?’ she stammered. ‘But why my house?’
He threw her a disbelieving look. ‘Because that’s where I’m going to be staying for the foreseeable future,’ he ground out, and Triss stared at him with real alarm.
Because reaction to their earlier passion was now beginning to set in. And Triss knew that the aching she felt deep inside her was much more than just a physical readjustment to making love after such a long time and having had a baby in the interim.
For, no matter how loveless the union which had taken place on the bed before, Cormack was still the father of her child—still the man she had loved more than she could ever have imagined loving anyone. And she was not immune to him—indeed, she suspected that she never would be immune to him.
So how the hell could he suggest staying in her house? And how on earth could she contemplate letting him do so?
‘You can’t do that!’ she protested.
‘No?’ He raised a dark, arrogant eyebrow. ‘Just watch me, Triss.’
‘It’s my house—’
‘Listen, sweetheart,’ he cut in brutally. ‘You can stand there and spout a list of objections as long as your arm, but believe me when I tell you that they will not make an iota of difference to my plans—’
‘What plans?’ she asked immediately, wondering why all this seemed to be going so horribly wrong.
He shook his dark head. ‘I don’t intend to waste any more time in discussion now. Just lock up, then get in the car and we’ll talk there.’ He took her small overnight bag from her and began to trudge up the hard, wet sand towards where Triss had parked her navy BMW.
Triss felt too emotionally overwhelmed to do anything other than automatically carry out his instructions, so she locked up the cottage and made her way towards the car, where Cormack was already settled in the driving seat, his dark profile stony and unforgiving.
She waited until he had negotiated the car up the steep, narrow lanes and was at last heading out on the motorway towards London before she brought the subject up once more.
‘What plans,’ she asked, ‘were you referring to earlier?’
There was a pause. ‘Plans to get to know my son, of course.’
‘Cormack, I really think—’
‘And the only way to do that is to live with him,’ he continued remorselessly.
His words were like lethal little darts being fired into her skin—there was such unconcealed venom behind them. ‘Live with him?’ she questioned faintly, not quite believing what she’d heard, but the implacable expression in his blue eyes left her in no doubt.
‘Yes, live with him!’ he echoed passionately. ‘Because you’ve denied me five months of his life, damn you, Triss Alexander, and I don’t intend to let you deny me any more!’
Triss closed her eyes and saw a vivid image of what living with a Cormack who despised her might be like, and she felt physically sick at the thought of it. ‘You can’t just barge into someone’s house uninvited—’
‘But you did invite me, didn’t you?’ he told her in that silky Irish way of his as he smoothly overtook a car which was hogging the middle lane. ‘If not to your house, then certainly back into your life. And there must have been a reason behind that invitation, mustn’t there, sweetheart?’
His eyes glittered with undisguised hostility. ‘So what was it? Getting tired of the burden of motherhood? Wanting to spread your wings? Some man on the horizon who can’t tolerate the sound of a crying baby when he’s trying to make love to you?’
‘If you weren’t driving I would hit you for saying something as disgusting as that!’ she fired back at him, her heart thudding painfully in her chest.
He shrugged, seemingly unperturbed by her threat. ‘Disgusting, Triss?’ he mocked. ‘Or realistic?’
‘Do you really think,’ she flared, so angry that she could barely catch her breath, ‘that I would have gone to bed with you this afternoon if I had some other man hovering in the background?’
He edged smoothly into. top gear and the powerful car seemed to swallow up the road in front of them. ‘How would I know what you would do any more?’ he challenged fiercely. ‘You’re like a stranger to me now, Triss.’
‘A stranger?’ she whispered, slowly becoming aware that her actions seemed to have opened up a real can of worms. She had seen no further than her desire to hurt Cormack as he had hurt her; she had given no thought to how she still felt about the father of her baby. And no thought, either, to how vulnerable his blistering criticism would make her feel. ‘Cormack—I shared your life and your house for almost a year...’
His mouth hardened forbiddingly at the corners. ‘If you think that I am about to be swayed by your sentimental reminiscences, then think again, sweetheart!’ he snapped, speaking with a bitter kind of cynicism which Triss had never heard him use before.
‘So how can you say that I’m like a stranger to you?’ she asked him in genuine confusion.
‘Because the woman I-thought I was in love with would never have behaved in such a despicable way!’ he stormed. ‘You suddenly confront me with the news that I am a father—’
‘And have you never stopped to ask yourself just why I might have behaved in such a “despicable” way?’ Triss snapped back as she remembered how she had felt when she’d discovered that he had betrayed her.
He shook his dark head impatiently. ‘I’m afraid that your motivations concern me less than practical considerations at the moment, Triss. Like whereabouts in Surrey are we going?’
She wondered whether he would have heard of it. ‘To St Fiacre’s Hill estate,’ she told him slowly.
He had. He exhaled a long, low breath. ‘Not “The Beverly Hills of England”?’ he quoted, in a mocking sing-song voice.
‘That’s what the tabloids say,’ answered Triss, with a defensive little shrug.
‘And the reason why, presumably, you wanted to live there?’
The numbing effect of the intimacies they had shared was wearing off, and now came the return of Triss’s sense of purpose. ‘Don’t make any presumptions on my behalf, thank you very much!’ she told him frostily. ‘I happened to buy the house because it is set in almost nine hundred acres of beautiful green land.’
‘Rather than because it happens to be populated by rich men with an eye for a beautiful woman on her own?’ he mocked.
‘That doesn’t even deserve the courtesy of a response!’ Triss glared at him. ‘St Fiacre’s is secure and well