Cass’s breathing shallowed to a whisper as she became aware of him watching her.
He released one of her arms but only so he could cup her face with a hand. He turned her gaze to his and wouldn’t let her look away. Ice-blue eyes somehow burned a path to her heart, making it hurt.
‘Tell me how it was, then, Cass,’ he finally murmured, ‘you and I.’
‘I—I—’ Cass didn’t know any more. She’d forgotten why they were arguing, forgotten why they were here.
The years were falling away and once more she was in the grip of an emotion so powerful it blanked out reason.
It was a living force, invading her body, as hands went round her waist and drew her to him. It was a sickness, spreading through her, as, unerringly, his mouth sought hers, and, helplessly, her lips parted. It was a drug, rushing through her veins, straight to her heart and head.
No words were spoken. Words were irrelevant. Need was all. The need to touch, be touched. To re-affirm life on a day shadowed by death.
Or maybe it was just sex. Raw and immediate, as he lifted her against the cool rough bark, mouth still kissing, hard, passionate, close to violent in its intent. Then it was hands, pulling at her blouse, almost tearing, stripping bare, flesh swelling, aching for his teeth, his tongue. It was that other Cass, gasping, moaning, clinging to him as desire flowed through her like a river.
His mouth was at her breast, his hand already pushing between her thighs when they were thrown an unwanted lifeline, one that couldn’t be ignored: a voice calling, far away at first, but homing in on them.
Any earlier and they would have been saved their brief insanity.
Later and they would have been making love on the ground.
As it was, Dray Carlisle stopped only when the voice came dangerously near and she started to push him away in panic.
‘It’s okay.’ He released her slowly. ‘It’s my Personal Assistant, Alec Stewart.’
Alec Stewart—the father of the boy they’d rescued all that time ago.
But why was that okay? Cass wondered as she desperately smoothed her skirt back down and tried to redo buttons, finding she had two extra thumbs.
He brushed her hands away and she submitted to him fastening what he’d earlier almost ripped apart.
The answer came to her: of course it was okay for him! He was the rich, powerful Drayton Carlisle. Ordinary rules didn’t apply to him. He could do what he liked.
She was just the pathetic piece who let him—and on the day of her sister’s funeral.
Shame hit her in a wave. She couldn’t look at him so she looked at the ground until he was finished, then, picking up her fallen jacket, she walked unsteadily away as Alec Stewart approached.
She had no idea where she was going. She was just desperate to get away, asking herself over and over: how could she? On today of all days, how could she allow him—of all people—to make love to her?
Perhaps he was right. She was oversexed.
But could that be? Over the past three years she’d had one single brief relationship.
No, it was him. He just had to touch her and she turned into slut of the year. It had been the same the last time.
Only the last time she’d dressed it up as love and dreamed of happy-ever-afters…
She rewound once more, back to Pen’s wedding day and let the tape play on.
The young doctor had left and she’d lain where she was. She’d been so tired, her abortive rescue bid coming on top of a sleepless night. She’d shut her eyes for a moment and the next, had been fast asleep
She’d been woken by a gentle hand. Dray Carlisle had been standing by the bed.
‘Your sister will be going soon. Do you feel up to coming down?’
She stared up at him, slowly recalling the day’s events until she reached the most momentous—their kiss. The rest—weddings and rescues and injured feet—meant little in comparison.
‘Are you all right?’ he added at her silence.
‘Yes…Yes, of course.’
‘I’ve borrowed some clothes for you.’
He indicated a dress and underwear lying at the foot of the large bed.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll wait outside.’
He left, shutting the door quietly behind him. He no longer seemed angry with her, just remote.
Blinking away sleep, Cass glanced at her watch and discovered she’d lost almost three hours.
She sat up and shuffled to the borrowed clothes. The bra was too small but she slipped on lacy white pants that looked as if they’d never been worn. The dress was mint-green and sleeveless, bearing an expensive label, and Cass wondered whose it was. It felt tight round the bust and was a little short in the leg but otherwise fitted. In the absence of any makeup, she settled for combing her long hair loose.
She was more or less ready when he returned, knocking first before entering.
They traded stares once more.
Cass realised she was never going to get used to him being this handsome.
His gaze was intense but his face unreadable.
She pushed herself up from the bed and almost instantly sat back down. She was unable to feel her foot but had thought by some miracle it would actually do its job and support her.
‘I’ll carry you down,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘Yes, all right.’ She didn’t want to make a fuss. Making a fuss would be tantamount to admitting that it affected her, being close to him.
‘Unless you’d prefer John,’ he added, sensing her reluctance.
‘John?’
‘Dr Michaelson.’
Cass pulled a slight face, saying, ‘I wouldn’t think carrying patients is quite in his job description.’
‘He might make an exception in your case,’ Dray suggested. ‘He seemed somewhat smitten.’
‘Smitten?’ The archaic term almost made her laugh.
Would have made her laugh only he clearly wasn’t joking.
‘Perhaps I’m wrong and his interest in where you live and what you do—’ he arched a brow ‘—is purely medical.’
‘I bet you couldn’t resist telling him I’m a checkout girl,’ she accused in reply.
‘As a matter of fact, I told him nothing.’
‘Oh.’
Cass felt wrong-footed as well as dead-footed as he at last crossed to her side and, placing one arm under her shoulders, the other at her knees, lifted her up from the bed.
Only when they were walking from the room did he add, ‘Nothing apart from what should be obvious.’
Cass knew she shouldn’t ask but couldn’t resist. ‘And that is?’
‘His interest wasn’t welcome.’
‘Right.’
But it wasn’t right. How did he know whether it was welcome or not?
‘So you feel you can speak for me?’ she challenged and made the mistake of looking straight at him.
He looked straight back as he replied, ‘I was speaking for myself.’
Cass’s Oh this time was barely mouthed as she realised from the set of his face that they were no longer playing games—if they ever had been.
He didn’t say more, didn’t need to. It was in his eyes, in the way he held her.
He wanted her.
And she…?
Laid her head against his shoulder, trying to hide away her own feelings, and trembled as he buried his face in her hair.
Wanted him, too.
It seemed that simple as he continued down the long staircase and out to the terrace and across summer lawns, holding her close, touching but not kissing, intimate in their own time and place.
Then they entered the marquee and the spell was broken by the heat and the noise and, most especially, her sister’s face as they approached.
Annoyance was quickly masked as Dray set Cass down at the table and various people congratulated Cass on that afternoon’s rescue, but when Dray went with Tom to fetch drinks, Pen launched into a full inquisition.
Sh
e’d heard the rescue story, of course, but hadn’t quite believed it. She knew Cass was a poor swimmer.
Cass was honest, giving credit where credit was due, and stuck to the facts, but there must have been something in her voice, a different tone when she used Dray’s name.
Pen homed into it straight away. ‘What’s going on?’ she hissed under cover of the music.
‘I just told you.’
‘Not that. You and Dray?’
‘What?’
Were her feelings so obvious?
‘Don’t play the innocent,’ Pen continued. ‘Every half an hour he’s been up to the house, checking how you are.’
So she hadn’t been forgotten! Cass struggled to hide her pleasure in the fact.
‘I was asleep,’ she said in her defence.
‘Really? You’d think you were at death’s door the way he’s carrying on.’ Pen’s tone was so sharp no one could miss the jealousy in it.
Over Dray? The thought slipped into Cass’s mind but she pushed it out again. It was attention being focused on Cass, that was all. Understandable, surely, when it was Pen’s big day.
‘Look, I’m sorry if it’s spoiled things a little for you—’ Cass took her sister’s hand and squeezed it, wanting to make up with her ‘—and, of course, you’re right, it’s a fuss about nothing. Chances are he’s simply in a sweat, worrying that I’ll sue him for negligence.’
Pen was still frowning but looked ready to be convinced. ‘How could you do that?’
‘Unfenced river banks? Dangerous glass left lying around?’ Both reasons sounded improbable but it was the best Cass could do off the cuff.
Pen was happy enough with them, although she quickly moved to panic. ‘You wouldn’t really sue him, would you? You can’t! You might think they’re a bunch of snobs, who deserve what they get, but I have to live with this family.’
‘God, Pen, calm down!’ Cass couldn’t believe her sister sometimes. ‘Ask yourself, am I likely to go home tonight and call our lawyer?’
‘We haven’t got a lawyer.’
‘Exactly.’
The Carlisles probably had a firm of them, primed at any time to do battle.
‘Anyway, I just want to forget the whole stupid incident,’ Cass concluded, ‘and I hope you will, too.’
Pen looked slightly mollified and managed to switch a smile back on as Tom returned, closely followed by Dray.
If talking to Pen had brought Cass back to the real world, meeting Dray’s gaze had her head in clouds once more. Only now they had an audience and it was like being drunk when it was important to seem sober.
She tore her eyes away and kept them fixed on anyone and anything rather than him, and concentrated on making normal-sounding responses to Tom and Pen before they took their leave of the wedding party.
Dray and other friends and family accompanied them up to the terrace where a chauffeured car waited to take them the thirty miles to London and their first honeymoon night at the Ritz.
Cass was left once more with Uncle Charles. She tried hard to focus on what the older man was saying but her head seemed to be in a fog. She drank down a glass of champagne, then another. Hardly guaranteed to clear her head. Perhaps she didn’t want to.
The music played on and couples danced and Cass waited. Dray returned and sat down beside her and, without a word, took her hand in his.
There were other people at the table—his cousin Simon, his uncle, family friends. He didn’t seem to care who saw them.
It was Cass who said very quietly, ‘We can’t do this,’ even as her heart turned over.
‘Yes, we can,’ he replied and went on holding her hand.
They didn’t talk much. For once in her life Cass was nervous. She sipped at her drink and listened as he conversed with the others.
The party was in its dying stages when he finally left his cousin and uncle to wind things down and carried Cass back to the house. Her foot was pain-free but dead. There was no discussion as to how she was going to get home. He assumed she’d stay.
She assumed it, too.
He took her to the room where earlier she’d slept. He bypassed the bed and went through to the bathroom.
‘I thought you’d like a wash.’
‘Yes, fine.’
He sat her on a wooden linen box next to the sink and took down from a cabinet toothpaste and a spare toothbrush.
Cass washed her face while he went through to the bedroom and returned with the bathrobe.
‘Are you going to manage?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘If you undress, I’ll come back in ten minutes to carry you to bed. All right?’
Cass nodded and managed to hide her feelings until he left. She’d imagined him carrying her upstairs and seducing her. She’d guessed at her own reaction, a mixture of dread and desire. What she hadn’t anticipated was this sudden detachment. It made her feel let down and foolish and more heart-sore than she’d have believed possible.
She concentrated on getting ready for bed, levering herself on and off the toilet, using the edge of the sink for balance as she stripped off clothes and put on the white bathrobe. She wrapped it round her body tight and adopted a closed-down expression on his return.
He carried her to the bed and set her down on the edge where he’d pulled back the duvet. She shuffled into a sitting position against the pillows and, keeping the robe on, dragged the cover over her legs.
‘I’ll say goodnight, then.’ He stepped back from the bed.
‘Goodnight.’ She studied the bedcover.
Her tone was abrupt and Dray realised his own remoteness had caused it. He’d been trying to do the right thing, but now wondered what that was. He gazed at her until she raised her eyes back to his.
Compelled to look at him, Cass felt the truth finally dawn on her. His desire for her hadn’t died or diminished. It was just being rigidly controlled.
‘If I kiss you,’ he told her quietly, ‘I won’t want to stop. In fact, I might not be able to. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I don’t think you’re quite ready for that,’ he added without rancour, ‘so I’d prefer to wait until you are.’
Cass agreed. She wasn’t ready for him and was never going to be. He was too everything. Handsome, smart, sexy, rich. And she was hardly enough—a passing pretty, small town girl.
But if he waited, it wouldn’t happen. Tomorrow they’d waken up to the real world and recognise how impossible they were together.
No, this was their moment in time.
She watched him walk to the door and turn to ask, ‘Shall I put out the light?’
She nodded, and said under cover of darkness, ‘I’d like you to kiss me, too.’
It was greeted with total silence. She held her breath and time seemed to stand still. Then the door clicked shut behind him.
Cass had a moment’s anguish, thinking he had gone, before she heard the sound of footfalls on the soft carpeting.
He sat on the edge of the bed. It was too dark to catch his eyes or read his face now but there was infinite tenderness in his voice as he said, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘You don’t sound it.’
‘I am… But if you’ve changed your mind—’
‘Silly girl,’ he cut in gently and gathered her into his arms.
He kissed her and, just as he’d said, couldn’t stop.
But Cass hadn’t wanted him to. Even now, years later, she didn’t pretend otherwise. They had made love that very first time but it had been far from the last. For three long wonderful weeks, he’d wined and dined her and taken her to the theatre and brought her home at weekends. They’d laughed together and talked of anything and everything and made love every chance they had got until Cass had almost believed it wasn’t so impossible, the shop-girl and the tycoon.
It had all ended in tears, of course. Her tears. Tom and Pen had returned from honeymoon and suddenly it had been over.
No explanation. He’d dumped her as quickly as he’d picked her up.
Pen had tried to make her feel better. It wasn’t personal to Cass. Dray always operated that way. What he wanted, he got—then lost interest in having it.
It had been no consolation, however, knowing she’d been one in a long line, realising how easily she’d fallen for his looks and charm.
But pride had reasserted itself. Too late to stop her behaving foolishly, but in time for her to get her life back on track. He’d treated her as if she were nobody, so she had resolved to become somebody. Not in his terms, perhaps, but in hers, as she’d returned to university to complete her degree.
Now here she was, a junior doctor, and it seemed nothing had changed. He still took. She still let him. Being the day of her sister’s funeral hadn’t stopped them. Nor the awful things he’d said about her, made worse by his attributing them to Pen.
He still took and she still let and, if the past had taught her anything, it was to run this time, to run as fast and as far as she could from Drayton Carlisle.
CHAPTER FIVE
ONLY running was hard through tangled undergrowth and fallen trees, and she hadn’t really any idea where she was any more.
She sped up a little when she heard her name being called and footsteps tracking behind, but it was no good. Instead of coming out onto lawn, she came up against the barrier of a wooden fence and realised she’d reached the edge of Carlisle property.
She had brief thoughts of hitching her skirt up and climbing over before common sense prevailed. Who knew what lay on the other side—a pack of guard dogs, a rifle-toting landowner?
Dray Carlisle appeared shortly thereafter to state the obvious. ‘You’re a little lost.’
She glanced at him briefly. He was cool and composed, as ever; it might have been a different man who’d been making love to her moments ago.
‘The house is this way.’ He indicated the path he’d come and waited for her to go ahead of him.
Cass didn’t see she had much choice.
She followed the well-beaten track until the wood turned into scrub grass, then lawn. They walked towards the house in silence but he stopped her before she could climb the steps to the terrace.
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