LITMIR.BIZ

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For the first time, humour danced in her hazel eyes.

      ‘And what’s so funny?’ he murmured casually, though his blue eyes were very watchful.

      ‘You,’ she answered without thinking. ‘Making all these conventional observations. It doesn’t sound like you at all, Cormack.’

      ‘And Triss Alexander lighting fires and boiling kettles and concocting soups—that doesn’t sound like you at all, either. So what do you think that says about us, hmm?’

      Triss shrugged. ‘I’ll leave all the deductions to you, I think,’ she answered brightly. ‘After all, that’s what you’re good at.’

      ‘But I thought that you were the queen of jumping to conclusions,’ he parried softly. ‘After all, I only had to speak two words to a woman and everyone knew that I must be sleeping with her, didn’t they, Triss?’

      His caustic words brought back the aching and humiliating memories of sexual jealousy, and Triss felt all the remaining colour drain from her cheeks.

      Was she setting herself up for more of the same? The same kind of limbo she’d used to live in constantly when she was with Cormack? She had hated the person she’d eventually become—with her checking and counter-checking and her suspicions about him. Her insane jealousy had appalled both her and him, and yet she had been powerless to change her behaviour.

      She drew in a deep breath. She had not brought Cormack here today to resurrect old battles. She was a mother now, and a responsible grown-up woman of twenty-four. She must lead by example, and surely if she was calm and mature and remained unruffled, then Cormack might behave likewise? ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked politely.

      The ironic twist of his mouth acknowledged her formality as he sank down into the armchair nearest the fire, his leather clothes making little swishing sounds as the fabric moved in conjunction with his big, muscular limbs. ‘Starving,’ he admitted. ‘But I need a drink first.’

      Triss was startled. She thought about the supplies she had brought with her. One bottle, and she wasn’t even sure if there was a corkscrew in the place. ‘I have wine,’ she told him rather hesitantly. ‘But that’s all.’

      ‘I meant tea, actually,’ he said, with a disbelieving little look at the grandfather clock which ticked loudly in one corner of the over-furnished room. ‘Goodness me, Triss,’ he murmured admonishingly. ‘Offering me alcohol before midday—what degenerate circles you must have been mixing in!’

      If only he knew! ‘I’ll make a pot,’ she said stiffly, and headed off into the kitchen where she welcomed the chance to busy herself with kettle and cups and saucers. The activity stopped her from thinking too much, and she willed her hands to stop trembling, but they steadfastly refused to obey her.

      He had not moved when she carried the loaded tea-tray back in and the sight of him in that tiny, old-fashioned room, all brooding masculinity and black leather, conjured up the image of something both sensual and forbidden.

      With his gleaming blue eyes and devil-may-care air, Cormack Casey looked the embodiment of the kind of man most mothers warned their daughters against.

      Unless you happened to have a mother like hers, thought Triss bitterly, who fancied Casey rotten herself and had delighted in enlightening Triss as to what kind of man he really was.

      ‘Here.’ He had gracefully risen to his feet and was holding his hands out. ‘Let me take that from you.’

      Triss blushed, knowing that she was at her most vulnerable when he was gentle to her. ‘It’s OK, thank you. I can manage.’

      ‘But it’s heavy, sweetheart—here.’ And he captured the tray from her with ease. ‘Sit down,’ he instructed. ‘And stop glowering at me like that.’

      Glowering was her only defence against being called ‘sweetheart’ in that irresistibly lilting Irish way of his. She was trying all the while to tell herself that the affectionate term meant nothing—nothing at all. It was a phrase people used all the time in Belfast.

      She had heard him say it to just about everyone in the past, particularly when he took a break from working, when he was on a roll and in one of those extravagantly happy moods which made women who were total strangers thrust their phone numbers into his pocket in restaurants.

      At the time, Triss had pretended to laugh at his entirely instinctive flirting—as he had laughed—but his ability to laugh had hurt almost as much as his refusal to rebuff the women who drooled all over him.

      ‘Does it turn you on,’ she had demanded one day, ‘to have all these women fawning over you and making themselves blatantly available?’

      ‘You seem to forget that I have a say in all this, Triss,’ he had told her frowningly, with a shrug of those massively broad shoulders. ‘These women feel they know me because they happen to have seen a couple of my films. So am I to be rude to them in public? It just makes it less confrontational if I let them leave their pieces of paper and smile politely. Later on, I bin them. I don’t know why it bothers you, sweetheart. It means nothing, and it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with you and me. Understand?’

      So Triss had forced herself to nod bravely, while the memory of those telephone numbers had scorched into her heart like a blow-torch and she’d tortured herself with wondering whether he had actually thrown them all away.

      Now he poured black tea into one of the delicate china cups the cottage had provided, and handed it to her.

      She shook her head rather apologetically. ‘I don’t take it black any more, Cormack. I’ll have milk and two sugars in it, please.’

      He very nearly dropped the cup. ‘What did you say?’

      She almost smiled. ‘You heard.’ He nodded his head so that inky tendrils danced enticingly around his ears. ‘Yes, I heard.’ He dropped two lumps of sugar into the cup and added milk before returning it to her with those black brows of his arrogantly arched in query. ‘So when did you give up the starvation diet?’

      When she had discovered that running up and down stairs to tend to a crying baby beat any aerobics class for using up energy! She sipped at her tea gratefully and looked at him. ‘I was never on a starvation diet, Cormack,’ she objected. ‘Just—’

      ‘I know! I know!’ He held his hand up and recited in a careless, bored tone, ‘Just no chocolate for your skin, no alcohol for your early mornings, sugar made you sluggish—’

      ‘It was my career!’ Triss snapped back. ‘And I wanted to do it to the best of my ability—which did not include staggering into an early shoot with a hangover, having survived on just three hours’ sleep, because you wanted to go partying!’

      Humour, which had stayed dormant in the depths of those lapis lazuli eyes, now shone through, nearly swamping her in its soft blue blaze. ‘But I thought you liked partying,’ he observed in that low, sexy drawl of his, rubbing his chin thoughtfully while he watched her.

      ‘I suppose I did. At first.’ Triss shook her head, wondering if she would ever get used to feeling her neck so exposed and vulnerable. She missed her long hair, that was the trouble, but cutting it off had come to symbolise the whole new way of life she had embraced. And if she grew it back again would she become that passive, prying clothes-horse she had grown to despise? ‘But after a while it wore me down. And those parties bored me.’

      ‘But you never actually said anything,’ he remarked.

      ‘No.’ She had just withdrawn and sulked like a schoolgirl—expecting Cormack to be able to guess the reason for her discontent, feeling disappointed when he did not. And disappointed too, she had to admit, that she on her own was not enough for Cormack. That he liked, even needed those parties.

      Cormack picked up his cup in the distinctive way which Triss remembered so well, cradling it between his palms, seeking warmth from it like a Scout sitting round a camp fire. ‘We should have talked about it,’ he observed. ‘Maybe

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