Her Sister's Baby. Alison Fraser

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СКАЧАТЬ check with Tom.’

      ‘Do that if you want—’ she scowled back ‘—but I’m telling you. She’d want to be cremated.’

      ‘If Tom agrees,’ he conceded, then went on to relay, ‘It’ll just be a small private funeral, family only.’

      She shook her head again. ‘That’s not what Pen would have liked, either.’

      This time his face reflected annoyance as he ceased making concessions for her possible grief. Her hard-bitten tones suggested she felt none, anyway.

      ‘Forgive me, but can you really be the judge of that?’ he countered. ‘It’s not as if you and Pen were very close.’

      Statement or accusation? Cass returned his hard glance. She owed him no explanation of her somewhat complex relationship with Pen.

      ‘Possibly not,’ she conceded. ‘I just happen to know her attitude towards funerals. At our mother’s, she found it pitiful that there were only a handful of mourners and swore she’d have hundreds at her own. She was only fifteen at the time—’ Cass paused and swallowed hard, determined to hold it together in front of this man ‘—but I imagine those sentiments stand. Unless Pen suddenly became the shy retiring type?’

      ‘Hardly.’ Drayton Carlisle’s mouth thinned at the idea. ‘I was thinking of Tom when I arranged the funeral.’

      ‘And I’m thinking of my sister,’ Cass replied.

      They abandoned their uneasy truce and exchanged hostile stares.

      ‘And I’m paying for it,’ he pointed out.

      End of argument.

      Cass’s lip curled. ‘You’re such a louse, Carlisle.’

      He grimaced briefly, before countering, ‘And you’re the hardest woman I have ever met in my life.’

      Deep down it hurt. No woman liked to be called hard. Cass, however, was a past master at hiding her feelings.

      ‘How kind of you to say so,’ she retaliated.

      ‘That wasn’t meant as a compliment.’

      ‘I know.’

      They traded stares again. Anger was prevalent for a moment, but it gave way to intrigue as each wondered what made the other tick.

      Cass was the first to look away. ‘I’ll see you out.’

      She rose abruptly and he followed. In the hall, they turned at virtually the same moment to reach for his coat and collided a little. The first to recover, Drayton Carlisle put a steadying hand on Cass’s arm.

      That was all. But his touch still burned and she recoiled from it as if it were an assault.

      ‘I wasn’t going to hurt you,’ he ground out in a voice tight with control.

      ‘As if,’ Cass threw back, angry at her own lack of self-possession.

      Perhaps Pen had been right. She was turning into an up-tight spinster.

      ‘No, of course.’ Drayton Carlisle’s thoughts were on Pen, too, as he relayed, ‘Your sister always said you were scared of nothing and cared about even less.’

      Cass could just hear her sister say the words. She shut her eyes but could still hear them. Tough talk, but quite untrue. Surely Pen had known that she’d cared desperately about her?

      Drayton Carlisle watched, at first a detached observer. Finally it was there. Pain etched on her beautiful, high-boned face. He’d wanted it there, to see if the girl he’d briefly known—the girl who could feel and laugh and love—had been real, yet he relented almost immediately as she lifted an anguished hand to her mouth.

      ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—’ he reached an arm out ‘—it’s not even tr—’

      ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Cass shook her head before he could retract it. Pointless, anyway. What he’d said was undeniably Pen, a throwaway remark that hurt less than the echoes of her sister’s voice, suddenly destroying her composure.

      Tears gathered at the back of her eyes, tore at her throat, threatened to spill too soon, as it finally got through to her, past barriers of self-preservation and years of professional training. Pen was dead. Not just missing for a while. She was never going to sail back into her life, maddening one moment, charming the next, reckless and lovable and, to Cass’s eyes only, so very vulnerable.

      ‘I have to—’ Cass couldn’t get the words out but she made to retreat.

      He caught hold of her arm again. ‘Listen to me, Cass. I was lying,’ he insisted, ‘and you’re right—I am a louse.’

      Just not a total one, Cass realised, unnerved by his turnaround.

      ‘It d-doesn’t m-matter.’ She couldn’t explain. ‘N-none of it matters. I—I…’ She shut tight her eyes but the tears leaked from them, anyway.

      A low, ‘Damn,’ came from Drayton Carlisle, but, if it was exasperation, he wouldn’t let her turn away.

      She tried, only he held her too tightly. She pushed at his shoulders, then actually struck him, when she could no longer stifle her sobs. He let her, offering her something, somebody to rage against in her grief, but she didn’t seem to have the strength. She struck him once more before she suddenly turned into a sobbing pathetic mess in his arms.

      She cried for what seemed like an age, her head buried in his shoulder, her hands twisted into the folds of his jacket, and he held her in his arms; for a while their closeness was as natural as breathing. But when there were no more tears left to cry and she sobered up, it was as awkward as a first clinch with a boy.

      More so, perhaps, because this wasn’t her first clinch with him.

      ‘I’m okay now.’ She lifted her head away.

      ‘Good.’ He was looking down at her, but she refused to look up.

      She spoke to his shoulder. ‘Please go. I have some calls to make, people to tell.’

      ‘I could do it,’ he offered surprisingly.

      ‘No! No, thank you,’ she tempered her rejection.

      ‘All right.’ He didn’t insist but gently pressed her arm as he said, ‘Look, I really am sorry—’

      ‘It’s okay, honestly,’ she stopped him before he could go on. ‘Pen says—said worse to my face. It just sounded so like her, that was all… About the funeral—’

      ‘If Tom agrees, we’ll make it public.’

      ‘You’re right, of course. It’s up to him. But what I was about to say is: I can’t go.’

      ‘What?’ He was clearly shocked.

      ‘I can’t go,’ she repeated as the hand on her arm finally dropped away.

      She СКАЧАТЬ