Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick
with a white-knuckled hand. ‘If I had simply chosen to “slake my lust”,’ he bit out, ‘then I would have chosen someone a lot more uncomplicated than you to do it with! Someone, moreover, who was not carrying around a load of excess emotional baggage! Don’t make the situation any worse than it already is, Triss, by defining what happened between us that night in terms of mere lust!
‘And tell me,’ he continued relentlessly, his voice tinged with bitterness, ‘did your primitive form of revenge make you feel really good? Isn’t that what revenge is supposed to do?’
She thought about his questions carefully. ‘Of course it’s supposed to make you feel good—there is a sense of getting even when you embark on revenge—but...’
His eyes were very watchful. ‘But?’
‘As to whether it has actually succeeded in making me feel good...then, no. Not now, it doesn’t.’
‘And before?’
She resented the tone of his questioning, as though everything were that simple. As though he were the angel in all this and she the big, bad devil.
‘Yes, I suppose it did make me feel good for a while—although that was some time in coming after the initial bitterness. When Helga’s call woke us up that New Year’s morning, I couldn’t believe that you could make love to me when you were still involved with someone else. Quite apart from what it seemed to say about your attitude towards me, as a woman, it seemed to belittle what we had shared before.
‘I went back to London, nursing my hurt pride.’ And her badly wounded heart of course, but there was no need for Cormack to know that. ‘And a few weeks later discovered I was pregnant.’
‘Were you scared?’ he asked with soft perception.
His expression was too intense for her to do anything other than tell him the truth. ‘I was absolutely petrified.’
‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
She gave a hollow little laugh. ‘Tell you?’ She shook her head, as though not believing that he could be quite so dense. ‘Cormack, you were the last person in the world I even wanted to think about, let alone speak to! I didn’t allow myself to consider you. Simon had become my baby—and mine alone.’
‘So that’s why you went into hiding? Why you instructed Michael and Martha to keep your whereabouts secret?’
‘You could have found me if you had really wanted to!’ she accused him, finally admitting to the pain she had felt when he had not come looking for her.
‘Do you really think that I am the kind of man to force himself on a woman when she has shown every sign of not wanting me?’ he drawled.
‘Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?’ she challenged. ‘By staying here?’
‘Oh, no.’ He gave a cold, cynical laugh. ‘The difference is that I am no longer concerned with what you want, Triss. My concern now is for my son—and his wants. His needs too. You have denied him a father through an emotion as shallow as a fit of pique—simply because you were jealous of another woman.’
Triss scarcely recognised her own shaky voice as she said, ‘This has more to do with respect than jealousy.’
‘Well, if it’s about respect, then why don’t you show me a little?’ he queried gravely.
‘And how do I do that?’
He gave her an odd smile. ‘By marrying me, perhaps?’
TRISS turned to look at Cormack as though he had just taken leave of his senses.
What bitter-sweet irony, she thought, that he should at last have uttered the words she had once longed to hear. And what a pity that it should be in such unconventional and unsettling circumstances.
‘Marry you?’
‘Is that such a bizarre request, Triss?’
‘In view of the contempt which you obviously feel for me, then I would say yes, it is.’
‘But I notice that you didn’t automatically reject the suggestion out of hand,’ he mused.
Triss shook her head. ‘That’s because I’m intelligent enough to see that perhaps marriage does have something to recommend it—in our case. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree to it.’
‘Why not?’ he enquired coolly.
‘Because, while I recognise that the advantages to Simon of having both parents around would be huge, I think that they are outweighed by one fundamental disadvantage.’
‘Which is?’
“That we find it impossible to exist in anything resembling a state of harmony.’
‘But we did once,’ he reminded her. ‘Or have you forgotten that?’
Forgotten it? She had every moment of it etched indelibly on her mind! She ran her hand distractedly through her hair, realising that with all the planning and excitement and dread of the last few weeks she had not bothered to have it cut.
‘That was a long time ago, Cormack—’
‘It’s a little over three years, Triss—hardly a lifetime.’
‘It is when you’ve had a baby,’ she whispered, and saw from the pained expression which clouded his eyes that she had wounded him when she had not intended to.
‘That much has changed,’ he conceded.
‘And more too!’ she cried passionately. ‘We were young then—and in love...’ Her voice tailed away dispiritedly as her mind registered how much it hurt to talk of love always in the past tense.
‘Whereas now we’re both old and cynical?’
‘That’s a bit how I feel tonight, yes,’ she admitted, and stretched her arms high above her head in an attempt to ease some of the awful tension in her neck. ‘Old and cynical.’
‘Me too. So do you want to show me my room?’ His blue eyes glittered as he noted the hectic colour which immediately stained her cheeks. ‘It might do us both some good if we were to sleep on it. Don’t you think?’
‘Y-yes,’ she agreed nervously. ‘I’ll take you up there now.’
‘Thanks.’ He rose to his feet, his whole manner one of detachment, his face betraying nothing other than mild curiosity.
Her knees felt as weak as a schoolgirl’s as he followed her up the oak-banistered staircase.
She had mentally earmarked the room she was going to give him earlier, when he had gone away to collect his clothes. It wasn’t the biggest room in the house, nor the best—in fact just about the only thing it had going for it as far as Triss was concerned was that it was the furthest away from her own!
She pushed open the door. ‘There are towels there, and a bathroom just down the corridor,’ she babbled. ‘And I’ve left—’
‘Where does Simon sleep?’ he demanded suddenly.
She had known he was going to ask. Had been expecting it and yet dreading it. Simon all rosy with innocent sleep was gorgeous enough to break your heart in any case—but was she strong enough to cope with Cormack filling the role of adoring father, as she knew he would?
‘In—here,’ she croaked as she led him to the nursery, which was next door to her own room.
He pushed the door open and walked noiselessly across the thick pale blue carpet to where Simon lay, and for a moment he was distracted—not by the sight of his sleeping son, but by the crib he slept in.
He