Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ Triss—to want to see someone else?

      ‘You had quite steadfastly and adamantly refused to discuss what had gone wrong between us,’ he continued, his blue eyes blazing. ‘Our relationship was over—you’d made that quite clear. And, yes, I found your suggestion that we could one day be “friends” an insulting one.’

      She began to mop up the spilt wine. ‘You aren’t one of these modern men who believe in a civilised ending to an affair, then?’

      ‘In theory, perhaps. In practice, not always—no. And certainly not to an affair which had been as passionate and as intense as ours.’

      ‘That didn’t mean that you had to leap into bed with the first woman who came along!’ she accused him.

      ‘I did not,’ he emphasised, with barely concealed impatience, ‘“leap into bed with the first woman who came along.” Nor the second, nor the third. Et cetera. Women throw themselves at me every day—and frankly I find it a turn-off. I always have done. I am not promiscuous, Triss, and I never have been. And what is more you do me a great disservice in judging me by the same standard as some of the more questionable escorts of your mother’s—’

      ‘Just you leave my mother out of it!’ she yelled.

      To her surprise, he backed down immediately, holding the palms of his hands up in a placatory fashion. ‘Very well, we’ll leave your mother out of it.’ He threw her a frankly questioning stare. ‘But did you really expect me to forsake all other women for the rest of my life? To carry your memory around engraved on my heart?’

      ‘Don’t be sarcastic with me, Cormack Casey!’ she warned him.

      ‘Then don’t be so bloody unrealistic with me!’ he snapped. ‘Just because you and I had split up—that did not mean I intended to remain celibate for the rest of my life! Or was that what you expected, Triss?’

      The certain knowledge that he had slept with another woman was like a knife being plunged through her heart. Oh, she knew that it wasn’t logical, and she certainly knew that it wasn’t even fair—but that did not stop the sickening images from swimming before her eyes.

      ‘Stop it,’ he told her gently, as something in her face must have told him her thoughts. ‘It’s over. It meant—’

      ‘Don’t you dare tell me it meant nothing!’ she yelled. ‘Helga Summers happens to be one of the world’s most beautiful actresses. So how can it not have meant something?’

      He gave her a reproving look. ‘Her beauty has nothing to do with it. And I was not about to say that it meant nothing. Of course it meant something—all relationships do. But that does not mean that it meant the same to me as what I shared with you—’

      ‘Don’t!’ She tried to clap her hands over her ears but he wouldn’t let her.

      ‘You will hear me out, Triss Alexander,’ he told her grimly. ‘For once in your life you will face up to facts and not bloody conjecture!’ He pushed her down onto a stool just before her legs gave way.

      She raised her head to find him studying her with a concerned and narrow-eyed scrutiny. ‘Oh, what’s the point?’ she demanded wearily.

      ‘The point is that our lives are irrevocably linked—through Simon—whether you like it or not. And we need to discuss topics which have been swept under the carpet for much too long.’

      ‘Like?’

      ‘Like the night of his conception, for example.’

      ‘No—’

      ‘Yes!’

      Triss closed her eyes but that made it even worse, for the memories clicked sharply into place—like a camera which had just been focused properly.

      She tried to recall just how she had felt at the time, and the conflicting waves of misery and elation came sweeping back to swamp her...

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      WHEN Triss had split up with Cormack, she had been determined not to become a wet blanket as so many women did when love failed to live up to their expectations.

      She did not need a man to define her! she decided. And she had lots and lots of good things going for her—a successful career, her youth and her vitality.

      She had only ever rented apartments before, and so the first thing she did when she arrived back from Malibu, with all her belongings in tow, was to begin looking around London in earnest for a place to call her own. More importantly, a place which would have no connection whatsoever with her erstwhile lover.

      After a great deal of searching she found exactly what she was looking for. It was relatively small—especially if she compared it with what she had shared with Cormack, so she made an effort not to—only a two-room flat plus kitchen and bathroom, but its beauty was its position. It had an uninterrupted view over Regent’s Park which made Triss feel as though she was living in the middle of the country instead of minutes from the centre of London.

      She flung herself into decorating it with a passion and soon it was completed in the soft, restful shades of blue and cream she loved so much.

      So she had her home and her work. The only area of life which she seemed to be missing out on was a busy social calendar. And this was simply unacceptable—at least according to Triss’s brother Michael and his wife Martha.

      Michael and Martha were doctors who lived on the outskirts of London, and they both nagged Triss to go out with a gentle persistence which gradually won her round to their way of thinking.

      Maybe they were right. After all, she couldn’t sit around like a hermit moping for Cormack for the rest of her life, could she?

      ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Michael demanded one day.

      ‘I will go to the very next party I’m invited to,’ Triss told her brother solemnly.

      ‘Promise?’

      ‘Cross my heart.’

      As it happened, the next party she was invited to was on New Year’s Eve. Triss drove across London for afternoon tea with Martha and Michael, and they quizzed her about the location.

      ‘It’s near Brighton—an enormous white house overlooking the Downs,’ Triss told them.

      ‘And whose party is it?’ queried Michael.

      ‘You remember Alastair McDavid?’

      ‘The photographer?’

      ‘Mmm. He’s just finished decorating the house and says he wants to invite every person he’s ever liked!’

      ‘So why you?’ joked Michael, and was rewarded with a long-suffering glare from his sister.

      ‘Sounds glittering,’ remarked Martha.

      ‘Hope so,’ said Triss—and she meant it. She intended to have a good time tonight—even СКАЧАТЬ