Читать книгу Sharon Kendrick Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 23
ОглавлениеTRISS must have fallen asleep, for when she next opened her eyes it was to find that Cormack was no longer on the bed beside her. Instead he had put his grey sweater back on, belted up his leather trousers and was sitting in a chair drinking a mug of coffee, a forbiddingly sombre expression on his face.
She quickly shut her eyes again, as if by feigning sleep she could postpone the moment of truth. At least he must have covered her up with this blanket, she thought thankfully, becoming slowly aware of the rips in her brassière and the torn panties which now lay in useless folds halfway down one thigh.
Instinctively she felt her body cringing as vivid impressions of how she had behaved came back with piercing clarity.
‘Ashamed, Triss?’ came the mocking remark, tinged with a coldness which she had never heard in Cormack’s voice before.
She sat up, pulling the blanket with her so that it concealed her breasts, and his mouth twisted scornfully as he acknowledged the self-protective gesture.
‘A little late in the day for shielding your assets, surely?’ he queried with disdain, and Triss felt her heart sinking with horror as she realised that never—not even when their relationship had reached rock-bottom—had Cormack spoken to her with quite so much contempt hardening his normally soft, lilting Irish accent.
But she could not afford to squander even more emotional energy by allowing herself to be intimidated by his scathing remarks. ‘I’m cold,’ she told him, noticing that he had picked her linen dress up from the floor and folded it on the chair beside the bed.
A muscle worked in his tanned cheek. ‘Try putting some clothes on, then,’ he said moodily.
Feigning a bravado she did not feel, Triss swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her panties fluttered redundantly to the floor, and she noticed that he quickly turned away to face the window.
‘I’ll wait next door,’ he told her shortly, and when Triss saw the unmistakable distaste which had thinned his sensual lips a slow anger began to burn away inside her.
‘A little late to play the gentleman now, surely?’ she mocked.
He turned around to subject her to a slow, insolent scrutiny. ‘What’s that, Triss?’ he queried softly. ‘Cue for me to come over there and do it to you some more?’
She recoiled from the wounding words. ‘Why are you insulting me like this?’
‘Perhaps I’m repaying the compliment, sweetheart! A man doesn’t find it particularly flattering to be used as a stud—especially by a woman who once professed to love him. Is that what you brought me here for, Triss—to service you? Surely there must be someone who lives a little closer than Malibu who would be able to oblige?’
She forgot that she was virtually naked, forgot everything except the desire to hurt him, hurling herself across the room and launching herself at him, all flailing arms and flexed fingernails.
But Cormack was faster, his face a mixture of scorn and reluctant desire as he contained her by imprisoning her in the steely circle of his arms. ‘Is this another previously undiscovered side to Triss Alexander? The spitting wildcat who needs subduing? And let me guess how she best wants me to subdue her, hmm? Like this?’
His lips were hot and hungry and hers were no different, and Triss found to her despair that just one touch was enough to awaken in her a primitive arousal more powerful than anything she could previously remember.
His hands were sliding all over her almost naked body, quickly disposing of the ruined bra, sinuously exploring every secret curve with an expert thoroughness which he had never displayed before. Not ever.
It was almost as if he had held back with her when they had lived together, as though her inexperience had made him especially gentle with her.
Well, he was certainly not being gentle with her now. And, what was more, she didn’t want him to be. She wanted his hands to explore her like this, and she longed for him to fill and possess her again.
She was about to sink to the floor and drag him with her when he stopped kissing and touching her as suddenly as if he had just discovered that she was contaminated, and Triss stared up at him with eyes which were dazed and confused.
‘Cormack?’
‘No, Triss! No! This is not going to happen. Not again.’ His voice was pitiless as he pushed her away from him. ‘I will not be used as a convenient pawn to satisfy your sexual frustration!’
‘But I—’
‘Get dressed!’ he ordered, and something in his eyes made her want to cringe away from him, like a dog who had been beaten. ‘I’ll wait next door!’ And he stormed from the bedroom, nearly bringing the door off its hinges.
It took Triss several minutes before she could even think about managing to get dressed, and she forced herself to breathe deeply as she had been taught in her yoga classes. Even so, it still seemed to take ages before she had calmed down enough to get her thoughts together.
She hadn’t known how long they would be at the cottage, but she had guessed at a good few hours at least, during which time she had planned to tell Cormack quietly about Simon. And then she had assumed that he would want to accompany her back to St Fiacre’s for the first glimpse of his son.
But nothing ever turned out as you expected, and she certainly had not anticipated that brief and frantic bout of sex on the bed—for it definitely could not be described as making love.
Oh, it had been ultimately satisfying—sex with Cormack always was—but it had left her feeling empty and ashamed. And it made her feel rather ill to know that she had behaved with about as much pride as one of the countless women who used to hand him their telephone numbers in restaurants.
At least she had had the foresight to bring a change of clothes with her—although as she pulled on a pair of black denims and a cream cable-knit sweater she wondered whether that had been a subconscious preparation for what had just taken place.
She ran her fingers back through her short red-brown hair and walked into the sitting room, to find that Cormack had put his leather jacket back on and was in the process of bending down to pick up his helmet.
‘You’re not going?’ she cried in alarm.
He stood up and looked at her, his face as expressionless as she could ever remember seeing it. ‘Yes, I’m going.’
Triss panicked, aware that all her carefully laid plans were crumbling like dust around her. ‘But why—why rush off?’ she queried, hating the sound of her garbled question.
He raised his eyebrows in a look of incredulity. ‘I thought I made my feelings clear a moment ago.’
Offensively clear—but that was not the point. Triss tried to swallow down the panicky feeling which was making her head swim. ‘You don’t understand!’
He shook his head. ‘Oh, I think I do, Triss. And I’m not exactly proud of what just happened.’
Triss frowned, dismayed and baffled by his reaction. And angry too. ‘But you enjoyed it, didn’t you, Cormack?’ she accused him.
His mouth twisted. ‘Enjoyed it?’ he echoed. ‘I could think of a lot more appropriate words to describe how that rather sordid little coupling made me feel, but I suspect that you might be insulted if I used any of them.’
She tried one last time, biting back the urge to agree with him—and to get as far away from him as possible. ‘Cormack, you don’t understand—’
‘Yes!’ he cut in mercilessly. ‘I do. That’s just the trouble—I understand only too well! We’re no good for each other, you and I, Triss! We can’t live together—we just destroy each other. The sex between us is mind-blowing—it always was—but at least before there was communication and affection. Even occasional laughter, which inevitably comes when you live together—at least at the beginning,’ he finished heavily.
‘Cormack, just let me explain—’
He shook his head. ‘Hear me out first, Triss. And perhaps that might spare both of us the indignity of something like this happening again. This must be the last time we see each other—do you understand that? Do you, Triss?’
He looked at her, his features tightly contained, as if he was determined not to betray one flicker of emotion. ‘Since our relationship is finished and all that is left is physical attraction—it diminishes whatever we once had between us—or it will if we give in to it. So we won’t. And I think that the only way to guarantee that happening is for us not to see one another again.’
She watched as he ran one long forefinger caressingly over the shiny red and silver surface of his helmet in an unconsciously sensual gesture, and then he gazed at her directly, his blue eyes searingly candid.
‘I cared for you more than any woman I’ve ever known, Triss—perhaps more than I ever will in the future. It just didn’t work out. That’s all. That’s life.’ He attempted a conciliatory smile, but Triss felt that he might as well have been firing poisoned darts at her.
‘At least we didn’t make it as far as the altar,’ he continued. ‘And at least we didn’t have children together. We might have messed each other’s lives up, Triss, but at least we didn’t inflict misery on any defenceless offspring.’
She could not let him say any more. His words had already ripped through what little self-possession she had left and had left her in no doubt whatsoever that their relationship was well and truly over.
Any more of that caustic, wounding tongue of his and Triss really doubted that she would have the strength to go through with what she had brought him here to say. Because already he was turning towards the door, that bitter, angry look still on his face.
‘You have a son, Cormack,’ she said into the brittle silence.
He stilled.
Triss thought that he might not have heard her. ‘You have a son,’ she repeated desperately, longing for some—any—kind of reaction, then immediately wished that she hadn’t, for the outraged look of disbelief on his face was like a sabre being plunged deep into her heart.
Countless seconds ticked by, and when he spoke it was as though he was using unfamiliar words, for his voice was totally unrecognisable. ‘Tell me that what I just heard is not true, Triss.’
She swallowed down the acrid taste of despair. ‘You have a son,’ she said again quietly.
He came across the room like a panther stalking its terrified prey, until he stood just in front of her, his eyes blazing angry blue fire which scorched into her soul. ‘You’re lying—’
‘I wish I was,’ she said, and then, when she realised the implications of that, ‘No! I didn’t mean that!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘I just meant—’
‘Shut up!’ He looked angry enough to strike her, but Triss knew that she was safe from violence, for no matter how forceful his rage Cormack was a man who despised physical supremacy when it was abused. One of his finest screenplays had exposed a wife-beater as the lowest form of cringing coward. It had earned him his first Oscar nomination.
‘How old is he?’ he shot out, and his words had all the cold, penetrating accuracy of a bullet.
‘He—he’s five months.’ She did not need to look at Cormack’s fierce expression of concentration to know that he was frantically trying to work out when Simon might have been conceived.
‘Oh, he’s yours all right, Cormack,’ she informed him steadily, trying her utmost to withstand the blast of raw rage which was emanating from his smouldering eyes. ‘You have only to look at him to know which stable he came out of.’
‘Only you’ve never given me the opportunity to do that, have you, Triss?’ he snarled. “To look at him?’
‘I had my reasons!’ she defended herself, aware of how stilted she sounded.
‘Oh, really?’ he bit out in disgust, and Triss almost recoiled from the look of stark hostility he directed at her.
When she had felt lonely and lost, and been missing Cormack like mad, her idea of keeping his child a secret from him had seemed like the ultimate act of justifiable revenge for the ruthless way he had treated her. But now Triss wondered if she had been insane at the time. Had her wildly fluctuating hormones been all over the place, making her temporarily mad enough to try and conceal Cormack’s baby from him?
Because if she had stopped to think through all the repercussions properly would she not have anticipated his terrible, terrible rage at finding out in such a way? And what would his next action be? Dear Lord, thought Triss frantically, what on earth had she started here?
‘Where is he now?’ he snapped.
‘At home.’
‘And where’s home?’
‘In Surrey. We’ve only just moved. We live in a beautiful house in—’
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.’
‘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 tended and very, very private. And the gates keep unwelcome visitors out—’
‘Like me?’ he queried sardonically.
Triss went quiet.
‘That must have influenced your choice of where to live?’ he suggested softly. ‘I imagine that if your instantly recognisable face—’
‘But I’m not instantly recognisable any more!’ she protested. ‘I’ve had my hair cut off—remember?’
‘Maybe not instantly,’ he conceded. ‘But certainly recognisable. Not many women have eyes and bone-structure and height and posture like yours, Triss. If you had chosen to live anywhere else I shouldn’t think it would have been too long before someone was tempted by the lure of money from one of the newspapers to tell the story of the super-model turned single mother.’ His blue eyes glittered. ‘With a lot of speculation as to who the absentee father might be.’
Triss gave a silent groan as she remembered blurting out Cormack’s identity to Lola. But she trusted Lola.
‘But I presume,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘that everyone who lives on St Fiacre’s is so financially secure and so paranoid about their own safety that they’ve barely given you a second look. And even if they did they certainly wouldn’t need to flog your story for cash.’
Triss wondered whether this whole idea of telling Cormack about his son had been nothing more than a hare-brained scheme. But it was too late to back out now. ‘You need to take the furthest exit on this roundabout,’ she told him in an odd, brittle kind of voice that did not sound like her voice at all. ‘We’re almost there.’
