Kiss and Tell

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘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 if it killed her!

  She pulled out all the stops and dressed up for the party as she had not dressed up for a long time.

  She dug out a glittering gold-beaded mini-dress and some outrageous thigh-high gold leather boots, sprinkled with silver stars, which she had bought on her last trip to Paris.

  She decided that she would look like a Christmas tree if she left her hair loose, so she piled it into an elaborate chignon and found earrings which were a cascade of silver stars and matched the detail on her boots.

  Like most models, she tended to play her make-up down when she went out more to give her skin a rest than for any other reason. But tonight she needed the make-up—needed it as a mask to hide behind.

  She applied blusher and a provocative brush of scarlet gloss on her lips, and used a dusting of gold powder on her eyelids which made her eyes look huge and dazzling—like a cat’s caught in the headlights of a car.

  When she had finished she blinked bemusedly at herself in the mirror—because the creature staring back at her was the catwalk Triss: highly glamorous and more than a little distant. It was, she knew, a look which threatened all but the most confident men.

  Good! she thought gleefully. She needed any social comeback to be gradual, and the last thing she wanted tonight was unwanted men homing in on her with seduction in mind.

  She shuddered a little, wondering if she would ever be able to contemplate the thought of intimacy with a man who wasn’t Cormack without feeling violently ill.

  It was a wild late December night when she started off with a wind-chill factor which promised snow and the usual gloomy predictions from the weatherman, and advice to people not to leave their homes unless their journey was ‘absolutely necessary’.

  Well, Triss had decided that her journey was absolutely necessary. Necessary to her sanity, that was! She was still recovering from the forced jollity of Christmas, when she had missed Cormack quite unbearably and had spent too much time scanning the post every morning for a card that never came.

  The party was glittering, as predicted, though Triss saw few faces she recognised—which was a relief. People she knew were still fascinated by her affair with Cormack, and always seemed to want a blow-by-blow account of why it had floundered. And she still found that too painful to relate.

  She moved around the room in her glittery gold dress with unconscious grace, sipping her champagne and nodding politely as people spoke to her—until the unbelievable happened and Cormack walked into the room.

  And Triss wondered whether she would ever be able to formulate a sentence again.

  What on earth was Cormack doing here?

  He looked directly across the r
oom at her and Triss stared back, her mouth opening to form a dazed ‘O’ shape. It was so corny she could have screamed—if she hadn’t been so busy feasting her eyes on him, and marvelling at how wonderful he looked.

  So why was it, she wondered, that he could wear black jeans and a black cashmere sweater and look an absolute knockout? Like sex on legs. While the other men who had obviously gone to loads of trouble and were dressed in formal evening attire—well, they just faded into the background in comparison!

  Oh, it’s hopeless, Triss told herself fiercely. Absolutely hopeless. You are not to compare him with the other men, and you are not to talk to him either.

  So they both played an elaborate charade. Triss pretended to ignore him, spiritedly entering into conversation with everyone or rather anyone other than the tall, brooding man with the black hair who was attracting every available woman to his side, like wasps around a jam-jar.

  Triss tried her best not to glower as the women hovered around him unashamedly. Although she did have to admit that Cormack appeared, at least, to be totally unmoved by all their attentions. He just stood there on the opposite side of the room to her, looking so cool and aloof, like some dark, beautiful statue.

  And it was not until supper was being served that she actually spoke to him. Or rather he spoke to her.

  She was standing at the end of the line, trying to decide if she would be able to eat anything without choking on it, when she heard a familiar deep voice behind her.

  ‘So who are you trying to impress tonight, sweetheart?’ came that distinctive Irish accent.

  Triss whirled round and her heart began to pound uncomfortably against her ribcage as she registered how close he was. ‘Well, it certainly isn’t you!’

  He merely shrugged. ‘Oh, I guessed that all right. For if you were you wouldn’t have slapped two tons of make-up on your face like that. And what in the name of God did you put it on with, Beatrice? A trowel?’

  Triss drew her shoulders back and gave him an icily sarcastic smile. ‘That’s what I like to hear, Cormack—you entering wholeheartedly into the party spirit—I don’t think! More like a lead balloon!’

  In a frozen silence they glared at one another, but their animosity only seemed to enhance the charge of sexual tension which crackled between them like electricity.

  He drew in a deep breath, like a person facing a particularly unpleasant endurance test. ‘So how are you, Beatrice?’ he asked heavily.

  What was he expecting to hear? That she was as miserable as sin? That she was missing him like mad? That she despaired of ever being able to feel a tiny fraction of affection for another man?

  ‘I’m fine!’ answered Triss, a determinedly bright smile on her face. ‘Absolutely fine!’

  He nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, the word sounding as if it was being dragged painfully from him.

  The silence which followed was unendurable. Close up, Triss found herself wanting to run her fingertips over the shadowed curve of that strong jawline. She felt her hands actually begin to tremble with the urge to do so. And she knew she had to get away before he began to suspect how she still felt about him.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she told him shakily, ‘but I really must get myself some food.’

  ‘Of course,’ he answered formally, and she noticed for the first time how pale he looked. ‘I could use a drink myself.’ And he turned swiftly on his heel and left the room without another word.

  After that, the party was ruined for Triss. Although she had planned to stay the night, for two pins she would have left right then. But the snow which had been nothing more than a chocolate-box flurry when she had arrived had been pelting down in thick and steady earnest as the party had progressed.

  At one point four of the men, including Cormack, went outside to investigate the weather conditions.

  ‘We’re snowed in!’ Alastair announced gleefully on their return, and the party erupted into cheers—although the only thing that Triss registered was Cormack’s darkly glowering face as he stood behind Alastair, his blue-black hair peppered with snowflakes.

  The music was turned up, glasses refilled and a real festive feeling took over as people got down to some serious dancing before counting the New Year in.

  But for Triss it was nothing more than an ordeal to be got through, and by a quarter to midnight she couldn’t take any more. Unobtrusively, she sneaked over to Alastair and asked him to allot her a room as far away from the madding crowd as possible.

  ‘Stay and see midnight in at least?’ he pleaded gently, but Triss shook her head.

  ‘I won’t, thanks all the same, Alastair,’ she told him quietly. ‘I have a splitting headache—I’m no fun for anyone tonight.’

  Once safely in her room, she heaved a huge sigh of relief, took off every scrap of make-up, untied her hair and brushed her teeth.

  I am not going to do anything as predictable as crying into my pillow, she told herself firmly as she pulled her nightshirt over her head. In the past two years I have cried more than enough tears over Cormack Casey, thank you very much!

  She took a book from her overnight bag and settled down in bed to read, because although she had made up her mind not to fall to pieces she was realistic enough to know that there would be little sleep for her tonight—not with Cormack settled in bed just yards away.

  With someone else? she wondered briefly, but blocked the thought immediately because that was just too painful to contemplate.

  She listened to the distant chimes of midnight and the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and then the sounds of people gradually settling down for the night.

  By four o’clock the house was completely silent, and Triss was still wide awake.

  She slid out of bed, put her head outside the door and listened, but there was not a sound to be heard. Telling herself that a drink would help her sleep, she padded downstairs to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of milk. She sipped it standing by the sink, looking out of the window, noting that the snow had finally stopped falling and that the sky was now clearing. In the distance, the silvery light of the moon was becoming more visible by the minute as the snow-clouds scudded away like jet planes.

  After she had drunk her milk, she washed the glass out and stood it on the drainer to dry, and made her way back upstairs.

  And there, at the top of the landing, by the wide window-ledge, stood a motionless figure.

  Triss took in those shadowed, sharply hewn features, saw the moonlight playing on the muscular definition of his bare skin, and her heart gave a helpless lurch.

  ‘Cormack?’ she whispered, half reluctantly, as if words might break the enchantment of seeing him there, like that, clad in nothing but a pair of jeans and looking so ridiculously approachable.

  ‘Hello, Triss.’ His voice was soft, and something in the way he smiled at her made it impossible to do anything other than go over and stand beside him.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Watching the moon,’ he told her, but he wasn‘t—he was watching her. He lifted a hand to indicate her free-flowing hair and her scrubbed face. ‘That’s much better,’ he observed.

  She certainly wasn’t looking for his approval, and yet the warmth in his voice made her reluctant to say so. She turned to face him. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Mmm. You look so beautiful when your face is bare.’

  And you look so beautiful when your chest is bare, she thought, though she said nothing about that either.

  As he watched her intently he reached his hand out towards her arm, and one forefinger lightly stroked the cuff of the thigh-length shirt she wore. ‘And this is mine, isn’t it?’ he asked, a note of surprise in his voice.

  In the darkness, Triss found herself blushing. What a complete and utter give-away! Fancy parading around the house at the dead of night wearing this old dress-shirt of his, which she had refused to give up—like a child hanging onto a much treasured security blanket. ‘You gave it to me, remember?’

  ‘Did I?’ he tease
d. ‘You borrowed it for a party, as I recall, and never gave it back!’

  ‘Yes,’ she gulped, overcome with nostalgia.

  The silence which followed should have been awkward, but it was not; it was comforting and reassuring and gloriously, gloriously familiar. They stood side by side, watching the full silvery radiance of the moon which turned the snowy landscape into a fairy-tale picture of silver and white.

  Triss recalled how they had used to watch the moon in Malibu too, in silence—just like this. Was Cormack remembering that as well? she wondered.

  She felt the speed of her heartbeat pick up and begin to pound in her ears, until she was certain that he must be able to hear it too.

  ‘Triss?’ he said suddenly, quite urgently.

  She turned to look into eyes which gleamed with dark, sensual promise and she began to tremble.

  Afterwards she would never be quite sure who made the first move. All she knew was that somehow she was in his arms again. He was holding her tightly and she was holding him back as though she could never bear to let him go—and nothing else in the world seemed to matter.

  They just stood like that for ages. After a while he took her hand and brought it to his lips and kissed the palm slowly, lingeringly, a question narrowing his darkened eyes. And Triss must have answered it mutely, for he silently led her down the corridor to what was obviously his room.

  She made no protest as he quietly closed the door behind them. He did not put the light on, but there was light enough from the moon, and he reached out his hand and moved it slowly down the side of her face, like a blind man reading his way by touch alone.

  Her eyes were wide with her own question as he took her once again into his arms and stared down at her in a way which made her begin to quiver helplessly.