No More Lonely Nights

by Charlotte Lamb

  It wasn't what Sian was accustomed to doing; it was a job for a sub-editor, in fact, but from the way Leo spoke she realised it was partly intended for a punishment. His other reason for keeping her hanging around the office was less obvious, but she guessed that, too.

  Leo wanted her under his eye. He wanted to know if Cass contacted her, or she contacted Cass. Over the weekend, she had vanished and left him without a clue what she was up to, although other papers had reported her presence at the hospital, and with Cass, so Leo had known where she was but had been unable to get hold of her. He wasn't going to let that happen again!

  He was still suspicious of her; he knew she hadn't told him the whole truth about her and Cass. He might even guess quite accurately what that truth might be, but he wasn't finding out from her and he knew that, so he was going to keep her where he could watch her. Sian wasn't getting out of his sight again.

  Cass must have seen the papers, but he didn't ring and he didn't show up at the newspaper, so as the day wore on Sian became more relieved and Leo grew more morose and accusing.

  In the end, he had to let her go home—he had no excuse for keeping her at the office after her shift was over, much as he would have liked to think of one.

  She took the underground home. It was raining lightly when she emerged from the station, so she started to run, but hadn't gone far before she noticed the limousine crawling beside her along the kerb. Sian looked casually in that direction at first, then did a double-take as she recognised it.

  'Can I give you a lift?' Cass asked, leaning over to talk out of his lowered window.

  'You can get into trouble for that, you know!' she said, turning towards the car and trying not to be too pleased to see him.

  'For what?' he asked, pulling up to a standstill so that she could slip into the passenger seat.

  'Kerb-crawling. A policeman might think you were trying to pick up women.'

  'I was—in the singular,' he said, and gave her a wicked, sidelong smile. 'And you are very singular.'

  She clicked home the seat-belt, feeling oddly at home in the luxurious interior now. 'Dare I ask what you're doing here?'

  'Waiting for you,' he coolly admitted. 'I thought you might like to hear the latest news of Annette's father.'

  'How is he?' she asked, sobering.

  'The hospital are being cautiously optimistic. They say he has a fighting chance.'

  'I'm glad.' She threw him a swift glance, then looked away, her heart light. 'How kind of you to go to so much trouble to let me know.'

  'Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,' he said, his mouth twisting upwards, and she laughed. 'I did have another motive for meeting you from work,' Cass added.

  'What was that?' she asked blandly.

  'I thought it would be nice to have dinner.' He said it very casually, but both of them knew the invitation was far from casual, and Sian took a deep breath, knowing that this was some sort of turning point in her life, in both their lives. She had a dozen good reasons for turning him down, for politely making an excuse and saying goodnight. She knew that if she really wanted to she could end it now, make sure that he never came again. She firmly told herself that that was what she must do.

  All she had to do was make him realise how utterly impossible it was for them to see each other again. Taking a deep breath, she asked huskily, 'Did you see the morning papers?'

  She expected his face to darken, expected him to start breathing fire and brimstone about the latest gossip, but instead he laughed. 'I did. I must say, your colleagues have very active imaginations.'

  Sian was incredulous. She looked at him, searching his face for clues to this extraordinary cheerfulness. It didn't add up when she remembered his rage over the other newspaper stories in the last few days.

  'But if we have dinner, if we're seen together again,' she said slowly, 'that will hit the gossip columns, too.'

  'I'm counting on it,' he drawled, and that was when the truth dawned on her. It wasn't Cass who was slow on the uptake—it was her. Of course he didn't mind their names being coupled! He was delighted. If the gossip columnists thought he had a new romance, they would concentrate on that and stop harping on about Annette, about his humiliation in being jilted at the very altar. Cass was indifferent about the gossip over himself and Sian— it was mention of Annette that hurt him.

  Sian's teeth met. He was using her again, just as ruthlessly as when he had made love to her in her flat, and for exactly the same reason! His ego needed it.

  'It doesn't bother you that I'm being gossiped about, too?' she asked bitterly. 'I suppose I'm expected to be flattered to have my name linked with yours?'

  'This is your profession,' he said. 'Maybe it's time you found out how it feels to be on the receiving end.'

  She looked at him with dislike. 'I don't think I will have dinner, thank you. Will you drop me at my flat, please?'

  'No,' he said, putting his foot down on the accelerator and shooting past her flat a moment later, in spite of her angry protests.

  'I won't have dinner with you!' she yelled above the roar of the engine. 'Do you hear? I won't get out of the car; I won't have dinner.'

  He didn't answer, which made her fidget restlessly. 'Did you hear me?' she asked, and he gave her a silent grin which sent her into positive mania. 'Stop this car, let me out. I'm not having dinner with you and I won't be used in any of your little games.'

  Cass laughed, which seemed the last straw. Sinking uselessly back in the seat, Sian gave up talking and concentrated on planning her escape. She would jump out the next time he stopped at a set of traffic lights, and run like hell; he could hardly abandon his car in the street, holding up the rest of the traffic, while he chased her, could he? Could he? She slid a look at him, not sure about that. He was capable of anything.

  They were approaching traffic lights now; he was slowing, the lights were red. Sian tensed, ready to move, but with inward fury saw the lights turn amber, then green. Cass picked up speed again and, baffled, she relaxed her muscles.

  'What are you plotting, I wonder?' he thought aloud, giving her a probing look before looking back at the road ahead. 'Whatever it is, don't bother, because you owe me for having printed that first story about the wedding. You got your friends excited in the first place, and I'm sorry if it isn't convenient for you to read about yourself in the papers, but there's a rather satisfying irony in it, and you're going to have to put up with it for a little while.'

  Sian didn't answer. She sat waiting for the next traffic lights, her eyes leaping with rage.

  Then Cass turned up a side street, round a corner and into a mews. The car braked, pulled up, stopped. Sian at once reached for the door, but Cass caught hold of her by the waist and pulled her back. She struggled and sprawled over him, flushed and furious.

  'Get your hands off me! I could kill you! Let go, damn you!'

  He held her firmly, his hands sliding up her body until they stopped just below her breasts, and Sian was abruptly breathless, shaken. She looked backwards, her head tilted so that his face was inverted above her; oddly unfamiliar, disturbing. The silence between them had a new tension. She heard him breathing, heard herself breathing, her heart banging inside her ribcage.

  Sian couldn't have put it into words, she wasn't even sure what it was she felt as the silence elongated and they stared at each other from that new angle, but she knew Cass felt it too, how could he avoid doing so when the very air was charged with electricity?

  'Have dinner with me, Sian,' he said at last in a low, husky voice, and she slowly nodded.

  She would have said anything to break up that conflict. It was unbearable. While he'd stared down at her she had felt naked, as if everything in her lay in her face for him to read—all her thoughts and emotions visible to him. She had been appalled and, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, she had fled into hiding.

  Cass helped her sit up, reversed out of the quiet little cobbled mews, and drove on through the Westminster streets until he pa
rked across the road from a fashionable French restaurant. It was the sort of place where you could guarantee being seen and noted; the media haunted it, watching out for celebrities, and would-be celebrities haunted it, hoping to be noticed.

  'I'm not really dressed for a place like that,' Sian wailed, looking down at her simple black and white striped cotton dress.

  'Very chic, I'd say,' Cass assured her, firmly walking her across the road.

  'Oh, would you?' she muttered. 'What do you know about clothes?'

  'I know what I like,' he said with amusement. 'And I like what you're wearing.'

  She ran a hand over her blonde hair. 'I look a mess.'

  'Stop fishing for compliments!'

  'I was doing nothing of the kind!' she protested, turning pink and giving him a furious look.

  He paused on the doorstep of the restaurant and looked down at her. 'You look lovely,' he said softly, and Sian was dry-mouthed and silenced.

  They sat in the shadowy little bar before they went into the restaurant itself; Cass ordered a Kir for her and a cocktail for himself. Sian was self-conscious, aware that already people were watching them. Press? Or just fellow-diners who recognised them from that morning's papers? Either way, she hated being stared at, and got up.

  'I won't be long, I'm going to the powder-room,' she told Cass, as he rose too.

  There wasn't much she could do about her dress, but she washed her hot face and renewed her makeup, spent some time doing her blonde hair, sprayed perfume behind her ears and at her wrists, then stared accusingly at her reflection. Why was she here with Cass, in spite of all her brave resolutions about never seeing him again? She knew what he was up to; he had boldly admitted it. He was a user; he had used her shamelessly from the start, and he would go on doing it if she let him. Why was she being such a fool?

  The image in the mirror had no answers; it stared back, green eyes far too big and far too bright, too excited for safety. She looked grimly at herself.

  'You make me sick, do you know that? You shouldn't be let out on your own.'

  The door opened, and another girl came in and looked at her in surprise, then amusement. She had clearly overheard Sian talking to herself.

  'It isn't any good, you know!' she said, laughing.

  'What isn't?' Sian asked, taken aback.

  'Telling yourself off. You never take any notice. Or at least, I don't!' She giggled and Sian smiled before going back to join Cass.

  He was leaning back against the velvet-covered seat, his glass in one hand, his face reflective, but as she came towards him his eyes focused on her and roved from her smoothly brushed blonde hair down over her slim figure in the black and white striped dress to her long, shapely legs. It was an openly assessing stare, and Sian bristled under it.

  She sat down and gave him a cold look. 'Is our table ready yet?' The sooner this meal was over and she got away, the better she would like it.

  'You haven't finished your drink.'

  She picked up the glass and drained the pink liquid. 'I have now.'

  Cass laughed and swallowed the last of his own drink before getting up. Their table was in an alcove fringed with drooping fern; a private little corner, except that to get to their tables other diners had to walk past them, and each time glanced curiously into the alcove. That apparently didn't bother Cass; he wanted to be seen with her and blandly ignored the stares, but Sian fretted under them, resenting it every time.

  The menu had been one long list of very rich food, so she had chosen the simplest things available—tomato salad followed by plainly cooked sole served with a tossed green salad. The tomatoes were thinly sliced, dressed in olive oil and basil; the flavour was delicious. While they ate, Cass talked casually about his work, his family, his home, and Sian listened without saying much.

  'Am I boring you?' he asked, sounding aggrieved, and she looked up.

  'No.' Their eyes met and she smiled suddenly, seeing the expression he wore. 'Not at all. I'm a reporter, remember. I'm always curious about other people. In fact, I'm curious about everything.'

  'Hmm,' he said, eyeing her. 'I thought you were being monosyllabic because you were bored rigid. I keep forgetting your job. You're a dangerous woman to have around, aren't you? I'm telling you far too much about myself.'

  Before she answered that, a man strolled past the alcove and turned his head to look at them. Becoming aware of him, Sian glanced his way at the same moment, and each recognised the other in shock.

  'Louis!' She sounded breathless, almost guilty, and went pink.

  'Sian! What on earth are you doing here?' Louis walked over and stood there, giving Cass a hard stare which wasn't friendly. He got a cold, narrow-eyed look in return.

  'How are you?' Sian asked, her presence of mind deserting her at this unexpected meeting. Their last meeting had been so violent; each had said things that had hurt and were best forgotten, and Sian hadn't quite got over either their affair or the abrupt ending of it. She wasn't still in love with Louis; she never had been deeply in love, but she had cared about him, and his angry accusations had been disturbing. He had demanded that she choose him or her job—and in asking that he had focused her attention on a painful truth. She had had to realise that her career and her love-life were in opposition, and might always be incompatible unless she found some very special man who could take the sort of life she led, the sort of woman she was, and that it wouldn't be Louis; it might never be anyone.

  That hadn't been a very happy realisation, and she was flushed and upset by seeing Louis again.

  'I'm fine,' he said oddly. 'I can see you are.'

  There was a sting to that, and he underlined it by giving Cass another cold look. Sian realised then that Louis must have read the morning papers, too, and he probably believed what he had read. He thought she had started an affair with Cass, and seeing them here tonight made it certain. Louis might have chucked her over, but he resented the fact that she had got over him so soon and found another man, especially one as wealthy as William Cassidy.

  Louis would have sulked over any man she was with, even though she didn't belong to him any more. He had always been a possessive man, as well as a selfish one.

  'It was odd, because he was very good-looking and had a lot of charm. You wouldn't think he needed to be possessive; women had always liked Louis, and a lot of girls had let Sian see they envied her when she'd gone out with him.

  'How's the job?' he asked with a faint sneer, looking at Cass again. Did he expect Cass to resent her career the way he did? Or was he hinting that she was using Cass to further her career?

  'Terrific,' she said coolly, aware of Cass watching them both, his grey eyes frozen but observant. He hadn't said a word, and she hadn't tried to introduce Louis. She didn't think Cass wanted to meet him.

  'We ought to get together again soon,' Louis said, unbelievably, and she just looked at him, her green eyes wide with derision. Why had he said that?

  'I'll give you a buzz,' he said. 'See you.'

  She stared after him, still baffled, then the waiter came to take her plate away and looked reproachfully at her uneaten food.

  'Sorry, I'm not as hungry as I thought,' she apologised, and he removed her plate with an offended smile.

  'So, who was that?' Cass asked while they waited for their next course. 'A fellow scribe?'

  'Sorry, I'd have introduced you if I thought you wanted to meet him,' she lied, and was given a dry, disbelieving look.

  'What made you think I didn't want to?'

  She made flustered noises. 'Well… I…'

  'I got the idea he was more than just a colleague, though,' said Cass, and her eyes slid away, her skin burnt.

  'I can't think why you should…'

  'I thought he was jealous,' Cass coolly continued over her stammering.

  'Jealous?' she laughed, a little wildly and unconvincingly. 'Good heavens, no! Jealous of what?'

  'Of me,' said Cass, and she laughed some more.

  'Of you
? Of course not.'

  'He certainly didn't like finding us together,' he said, watching her closely.

  Sian shot him a look, then away. 'I haven't seen him for ages,' she volunteered in the hope of stopping the discussion there. A hope misplaced.

  'Why not?' enquired Cass, and she opened her mouth and closed it again, daunted by the prospect of explaining.

  'Oh, you know the way it goes,' she offered.

  'No, tell me,' he invited softly.

  Sian shrugged helplessly. 'Well, it didn't…'

  'Work out?' suggested Cass, and she jumped at the words.

  'Work out—exactly.'

  'Why not?'

  'Why not?' she repeated, floundering again. 'Well, it just didn't.'

  'He's not bad-looking,' he thought aloud, his tone tolerant.

  'He's very good-looking,' corrected Sian, to be fair to Louis.

  'Hmm,' Cass said, frowning. 'And he obviously still fancies you. So why did you split up? A quarrel?'

  'In a way,' she capitulated, realising he meant to find out. 'He didn't like my job and gave me an ultimatum—him or my job. So we split up.'

  'He must be a fool,' said Cass. 'What sort of ultimatum is that? What else did he expect you to do? You're well rid of him. I admire your taste.'

  She looked blankly at him.

  'You can't have cared tuppence about him or you wouldn't have chosen your job,' Cass said and she glared at him.

  'How I felt about him had nothing to do with it! I just couldn't see why I should give up my job— for him, or any man.'

  Cass smiled, his mouth crooked. 'That's what I meant. You obviously weren't that crazy about him in the first place, or he wouldn't have needed to hand out ridiculous ultimatums.'

  She laughed scornfully. 'Oh, I see! You believe a woman in love loses all interest in everything else, especially a career? How old-fashioned can you get?'

  'You can't compartmentalise love,' he murmured softly. 'It takes over everything else in your life, even your work, whether you're a man or a woman—and there's nothing old-fashioned about that, it's as up to date as tomorrow morning's paper.'