Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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      He interrupted her with a harsh demand. ‘Who’s looking after him now?’

      Triss swallowed. All of a sudden she did not feel confident enough to admit to Cormack that she had left their son with a woman she had scarcely known for any time at all.

      Lola Hennessy was her next-door neighbour—an air stewardess with a sunny disposition and the sweetest smile that Triss had ever seen. Triss had watched the way that Lola played with Simon, and had known with a woman’s unerring instinct that Simon could not be in better hands.

      ‘Lola is looking after him,’ said Triss quickly. ‘And she’s a friend of mine.’

      ‘But not an old friend, obviously, since I’ve never heard of her.’ Blue eyes bored into her so accusingly that Triss flinched. ‘Can she be trusted?’

      ‘Of course she can be trusted!’ Triss exploded. ‘Do you really think I’d leave my baby—’

      ‘Our baby,’ he corrected her immediately, his words icy with anger.

      ‘—with someone who can’t be trusted?’ she finished.

      His eyes were spitting angry blue sparks. ‘How the hell should I know?’ he demanded. ‘You didn’t even bother to inform me that I had a child, which is pretty abnormal behaviour in anyone’s book. Why stop there? Why not engage a group of tame gorillas to look after him?’

      She tried to tell herself that it was natural for him to lash out in view of what she had just told him. What she had not expected was for his criticism to hurt quite this much. ‘Cormack,’ she said quietly, ‘calm down.’

      But he shook his head. ‘So tell me,’ he went on, his Irish accent deepening, ‘how many people are privy to this great secret of yours? Your mother? Your brother? Am I the last to know?’

      ‘Cormack, at least let me try to explain—’

      ‘Keep your explanations!’ he snapped. ‘Every damned one of them! Because every word you speak sickens me to my stomach. Just get your coat and your things together. We’re going.’

      ‘G-going where?’ she asked him in confusion.

      ‘To see him, of course!’ he retaliated, and he clenched his teeth together in a look which was almost feral. ‘I want to see my son!’

      Despair warred with futile hope in Triss’s heart when she heard the fiercely possessive note in his voice as he spoke about his son. Already!

      Blue fire burned from his eyes. ‘What have you called him?’

      ‘Simon.’

      There was a pause while he digested this. ‘Simon what?’

      Triss swallowed. ‘Simon Cormack Patrick,’ she got out through lips which felt as though they had been glued together.

      Cormack Patrick senior expelled a breath which sounded more like a hiss. ‘You bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You scheming, devious little bitch! What right did you have to give my child my name—’

      ‘He’s my child too!’

      ‘—and yet keep his very existence from me?’ He shook his head in dazed disbelief. ‘Why?’

      Triss had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling—with indignation as well as shock at the depth of his anger towards her. What right did he have to accuse her of being scheming and devious when she was fully aware of his underhand behaviour and his deceit?

      She opened her mouth to sling his insults back at him, but something stopped her. Now was not the time or the place to trade slurs. Let him feel outraged and hurt and isolated instead—for had he not been responsible for imposing that very state on her?

      She automatically raked her fingers back through her shorn hair, and she saw Cormack’s eyes briefly narrow in a look which was alarmingly close to pain. It was a gesture which harked back to the days when she had needed to push the thick dark red waves away from her face.

      Had it reminded him of other, happier times? Triss wondered. Or the exact opposite? ‘I don’t think that now is either the time or the place to discuss my reasons—’

      ‘For denying me my child?’ he flared, his face about as dark as the leather which clung to him.

      Triss swallowed down her fear and doubt. Cormack was wounded, yes, as she had intended to wound him, but why did her victory suddenly seem so hollow and empty? She had expected his anger—but she had anticipated nothing on this scale. Nor the genuine hurt and bewilderment which she suspected lay behind his angry words.

      She tried to harden her heart against him, but with very little success. ‘None of this is getting us anywhere,’ she said, in an odd, trembling sort of voice.

      ‘Too damn right it isn’t!’ he snapped dismissively, and as he looked at her the grim 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.’

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