Three houses, three couples—three reasons for revenge

The calm surface of life in St. Fiacre’s Hill—where lavish homes provide a secure haven for the seriously rich—hides a maelstrom of feeling. Geraint Howell-Williams, Triss Alexander and Dominic Dashwood all think they have a need to avenge—but the actions each sets in motion gain a life of their own, with entirely unexpected results.

Kiss and Tell is the second book in Sharon Kendrick’s REVENGE IS SWEET trilogy. Look out for Dominic’s story in Settling the Score.

Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

Kiss and Tell

Sharon Kendrick

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover Three houses, three couples—three reasons for revenge Dear Reader About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

WOULD he come? That was the question. A question which could only be answered by the man himself, all six feet four of him, with his unruly hair and his Irish eyes and that irreverent humour which always seemed to be lurking at the corners of a mouth just made for kissing.

Triss shivered. She must just be patient, and wait. She had waited fourteen months, after all, so another few minutes were neither here nor there.

In fact, what she should do was to make herself remember why she had split up with Cormack Casey in the first place.

And after that she should force herself to recall every single one of his bad points, so that a miracle might happen and she might remain immune to him.

Some hopes.

The sound of the waves beating down on the wet blond sand outside the cottage rang in her ears. Triss glanced down at her watch and for the twentieth time she wondered how Simon was. She had never been away from her beautiful blue-eyed baby before, and had been totally unprepared for the almost physical pain of his absence.

No one ever warned you what babies would do to you, she thought, with a sudden rush of overwhelming love. How motherhood would change you irrevocably, so that the person you used to be before you had the baby seemed like a distant stranger.

The cottage she had rented had been deliberately chosen for its lack of television and telephone. Cormack was a man whom other people clam-oured to be with. When they had lived together his phone had never stopped ringing—hence the lack of facilities in this out-of-the-way place. But, even more importantly, she wanted all his attention when she dropped her bombshell into his lap.

She had given the number of the local pub to Lola—who was looking after Simon for her—with the instructions that she was to ring Triss immediately if there was anything she wasn’t happy about.

Please God, there wouldn’t be.

She thought of the comfort and security of her elegant house on the exclusive St Fiacre’s Hill estate, bought with the earnings from her successful modelling career. The perfect place, she had decided during her pregnancy, in which to bring up her baby.

Triss swallowed down the ever-present fears which were part and parcel of motherhood and allowed herself a fleeting glance in the mirror, wincing slightly as she did so.

The simple rust-coloured linen dress she had chosen was practical and comfortable, but it made her look so mumsy—and today it seemed to drain all the colour from her skin.

Should she have worn make-up? she wondered.

She had decided against it in the end. Make-up might seem contrived, as though she was trying to focus all Cormack’s attention on her, while nothing could be further from the truth.

Her face was pale—paper-pale—with the freckles which spattered her small snub nose standing out in stark relief. Her green and golden eyes were as big as beacons, but tiny lines of strain, fanning out from the corners, could be seen if you looked closely. Though she doubted that Cormack would be interested in looking closely.

At least she wasn’t holding out any hope that Cormack would attempt to seek some form of reconciliation with her today. She looked a completely different person from the woman he had first met—with her red-brown hair all shorn off, her face completely bare of make-up. And hadn’t Cormack loved the fact that her model-girl looks were so flamboyant that millions of men lusted after her?

Well, she couldn’t imagine anyone lusting after her now...

She heard the distant sound of an engine, and her ears pricked up even as she frowned, trying to work out what made this particular engine sound quite unlike any car she had ever come across. But only one man in the world would drive to a beach in something which sounded like Concorde breaking through the sound barrier!

Cormack!

Triss ran her fingertips beneath her eyes, as if by doing so she could magically remove the dark smudges of so many sleepless nights. Then she bit down hard on her bottom lip so that the blood rushed in to give her mouth some colour.

And waited.

The cottage was right off the beaten track—that had been one of the main reasons for choosing it. The beach made it fairly inaccessible, and you had to park your car right at the top and then clamber down over a low wall before you could walk across the sand to the house.

So how come she could hear the engine getting closer and closer, its loud, buzzing intensity sounding like a giant insect gone mad?

Triss flung the front door open and saw the sleek black and silver machine which was noisily growling its way to a halt right in front of the cottage, sludging up the pale, hard sand as it did so.

Trust Cormack to hire himself a motorbike, she thought, torn between exasperation and admiration. It had been one of the things which had both attracted and infuriated her—the fact that Cormack Casey was like no other man in the world.

The man in question was now pulling off an outrageous silver and scarlet crash-helmet, and Triss held her breath to see whether he had adopted a more sober and sensible hairstyle which might better reflect his reputation as Hollywood’s hottest, sharpest and hunkiest scriptwriter.

He hadn’t!

And Triss was unprepared for the relief which flooded through her as she caught sight of that magnificent mane of dark hair which grew down the tanned column of his neck. Too long and too tousled, it gleamed blue-black beneath the pale light of the March sun, with its riotous waves looking as though some frantic woman had just run her fingers all the way through it.

Triss swallowed down the dark, bitter taste of jealousy and looked into eyes as deeply blue as the finest lapis lazuli. Simon’s eyes, she thought suddenly, with the shock of recognition.

‘Hello, Beatrice,’ he said unsmilingly, and his voice sounded at once strange and yet poignantly familiar.

The Irish accent, she noted, was still intact, though now it held the faintest trace of a soft Mid-Atlantic twang. Hardly surprising, Triss supposed, seeing as how he had been living in the States since the age of sixteen.

‘Hello, Cormack,’ she said, her own voice sounding reedy and weak—but that was hardly surprising either. She had been unprepared for the impression he always made on her, and that was sheer stupidity. How on earth could she have forgotten just how devastating he was in the flesh?

He was dressed from head to toe in black leather. A leather jacket clung to shoulders as broad as a labourer’s and then tapered down to the curved indentation of his waist, and below the jacket were leather jeans—black and outrageously snug, the soft material caressing the muscular definition of his thighs, and on and on down his seemingly endless legs.

Leather, thought Triss despairingly. That most sensual of fabrics, with its sleek look and slick feel and its exciting, animal scent.

Those intelligent blue eyes didn’t miss a trick. He observed her gaze wandering, hypnotised, over every centimetre of his body. ‘Like it?’ he queried softly.

‘What?’ she whispered.

‘The leather.’ His eyes glittered. ‘Some women find it a turn-on.’

‘Is that why you wore it?’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps subconsciously?’

‘You look like a labourer,’ she said sweetly. ‘Or a degenerate rock star.’

The first smile came then—a typically roguish Cormack-type smile—and Triss was unprepared for its impact. Stupidly unaware that the sight of it would set her heart racing as it had done so many times before. Damn him! she thought indignantly. He knows. He knows what that smile can do to a woman. And it’s an unfair advantage!

‘Well, that’s appropriate, isn’t it?’ he drawled. ‘As I’ve been both a labourer and a rock star. Though never degenerate.’ There was a long pause while he studied her. ‘You’ve had your hair cut, Triss,’ he said eventually, and there was an odd note of surprise in his voice.

Triss had been holding her breath, waiting for all the comments he could have made, and felt oddly disappointed that Cormack, of all people, should have said something so commonplace.

For the first time she felt a glow of something approaching achievement—that she had had the strength to remove the trademark which had eventually trapped her. ‘Yes,’ she agreed evenly. ‘All chopped off.’

‘When?’ he demanded, as though she were a suspect he was cross-examining.

This was a touch more difficult—she had had her thick red-brown hair shorn on the day she had discovered she was pregnant. It had seemed a very symbolic and necessary thing to do at the time. She gave a careless little shrug. ‘Can’t remember,’ she lied.

The blue eyes narrowed disbelievingly. ‘Really? Can you remember why you did it?’

Triss managed to return his hard, questioning stare. ‘Why shouldn’t I cut it? Models often change their image—’

‘But you don’t model any more, do you, Triss?’

Her eyes widened. How much, she wondered anxiously, did he already know? ‘Wh-what do you mean?’

He frowned. ‘Good God, woman—has your brain gone to mush, or are my questions so complex that I’m going to have to clarify each and every one?’

“There’s no need to be so sarcastic!’ Triss shot back furiously, remembering how his razor-sharp mind had always been able to make her feel so ridiculously inferior. But no more. No more. ‘Is there?’

‘No.’ He gave her a steady look. ‘OK, I presume that you’ve given up modelling—mainly because I never see you in any of the glossies these days. And you certainly aren’t very visible on the catwalk. Are you?’

Had he perhaps been following her career? Hope stirred foolishly in her heart, but Triss firmly repressed it. ‘No. That’s right. I’m not modelling these days.’

Arrogant black brows which looked as though an artist had swept them on darkly and indelibly against that high, intelligent forehead curved upwards in bemused question. ‘And why’s that? You were the best model of your generation.’

Trust Cormack, thought Triss in some alarm. He had always had the knack of getting to the point without any effort whatsoever. Give him a couple more minutes and he would have extracted her reason for inviting him here, and that was not her plan at all!

She did not intend to blurt anything out. Not now—not on the doorstep with a bitter March wind blowing up a storm around them.

She had planned it out so carefully in her mind. They were supposed to have a civilised period chatting together. A reacquaintance over the simple lunch she had prepared. Something calm and unemotional which befitted modern, enlightened exlovers who knew all the rules of the dating game. Before she dropped her bombshell.

‘Why don’t we go inside?’ she suggested quickly. ‘It’s warmer in there. The kettle is on the boil, and I’m making some soup.’ She cast up her eyes expressively at the oyster-grey sky. ‘It looks like soup kind of weather, doesn’t it?’

‘It sure does.’ His mouth moved in a sardonic twist, and he said nothing more as he followed her inside, but Triss could guess what he was thinking.

In the days when they had lived together Triss had scarcely known one end of a kettle from another. And their relationship had never progressed beyond the tempestuous passion stage to the living in relative harmony stage.

How people changed, she reflected as Cormack walked into the sitting room, shutting the front door behind him. Well, she had certainly changed—she had had to—but had Cormack?

‘You’ve lit a fire,’ he observed in surprise as he placed his helmet on the floor beside one of the armchairs and began to unzip his black leather jacket.

‘Yes.’ 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 come to a compromise.’

Triss cocked him a glance. ‘When?’

His eyes gleamed as he sipped his tea, the look on his face leaving her in no doubt as to what he was thinking about. ‘I take your point,’ he murmured. ‘We didn’t actually do a lot of talking, did we, Triss?’

To her fury, Triss found herself blushing. She had meant that both her and Cormack’s heavy work schedules had conflicted, giving them very little free time with each other, but Cormack had obviously misinterpreted her meaning. Deliberately? she wondered. She lifted her chin. ‘No,’ she answered, sounding surprisingly cool. ‘We didn’t.’

His eyes glittered at her. ‘Anyway, as I recall, Beatrice, you didn’t find the parties completely boring. You enjoyed dressing up to the nines so that the whole room went silent as you walked in. Didn’t you?’ he finished softly.

‘I needed to look my best, yes,’ she argued defensively. ‘Because I wanted to make sure that I had enough work. And my agent always told me to go out with the thought that people were going to judge me by my appearance. If you will remember, those were the days before it became acceptable for models to grunge around in public wearing their oldest clothes with their hair scraped back into an elastic band. And besides, you liked me to dress up, Cormack—don’t deny that.’

‘Yes, I did like it.’ He nodded, his face reflective. ‘Your beauty astonished me, if you must know. I was as dazzled as the rest of them. When you pulled out all the stops to really dress up, I could hardly believe that you were with me—the upstart from Belfast!’

‘Like a trophy on your arm, you mean?’ she challenged drily. ‘Is that it?’

He shook his head so that the ebony waves gleamed as blackly as a raven’s wing, but his blue eyes were cold—icy-cold, like a frozen sea. ‘I’m not the kind of man who needs a beautiful woman to define him, Beatrice. You were there because I liked you—no other reason.’

And now? Triss swallowed, wondering when exactly they had stopped liking one another. She forced down another mouthful of tea, then looked directly into that strong, vibrant face which exuded so much earthy sensuality. ‘You’re still very laid-back, aren’t you, Cormack?’ she said.

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I would have thought that most men would have burst in here demanding to know just why they were here. Not sat there calmly drinking tea like a civilised stranger.’

‘We’re neither civilised, nor strangers. Not really—are we, Triss?’ His eyes glittered with an unspoken message of remembered desire, and Triss had to fiercely blot out the memory of lying naked in Cormack’s bed while he taught her everything he knew about the art of lovemaking.

And it had shocked as well as thrilled her to discover just how much he did know.

‘As to what most men would do—well, that doesn’t really concern me. All I know is that the woman I lived with, who disappeared so conclusively from my life after a night of the most spectacular sex I’ve ever experienced—’

Triss clapped her cool palms up to her flaming cheeks. ‘Cormack, don’t—’

‘Don’t what? Don’t tell the truth?’ he demanded. ‘Why? Does it disturb you so much?’ He smiled, but Triss could detect the anger which burned slowly behind the appearance of humour. ‘Why should she then send me a message—quite out of the blue—asking me to meet her at some God-forsaken place on the southern coast of England?’

‘Was it difficult to arrange?’

He shot her a narrow-eyed look. ‘I’ve reached the stage in my career where very little is difficult to arrange.’

It suddenly occurred to her that she had simply expected him to drop everything and just come to her.

And he had! Hope sprang to life in her heart, like the first snowdrop after the austerity of winter. If she asked him, might he answer all her hopes and dreams and prayers and say that he had missed her? Triss took her courage in both hands and said, ‘And why did you come so readily?’

He smiled. ‘I’m intrigued as to why you asked me, if you must know, Triss. And the sensation of being intrigued these days is so rare that I feel honour-bound to savour every moment.’

Disappointment lanced through her, but somehow she managed to keep her features neutral. ‘How jaded you sound, Cormack!’ she observed critically. ‘And how cynical!’

His eyes glittered like blue ice. ‘That’s the price you pay for success, sweetheart.’

‘Are you after the sympathy vote?’ she demanded. ‘Because you won’t get it from me, you know!’

‘I’m not after anything,’ he told her pointedly.

‘You were the one who invited me here, so you, presumably, are the one who is after something. I’m still waiting for you to tell me what it is.’

‘And you don’t seem to be in any hurry to find out,’ she observed in surprise, wondering why everything felt as though it was going horribly wrong.

‘I’m a patient man.’ He smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes, and for the first time since she had decided to contact him Triss felt a whisper of fear skittering down the length of her spine.

‘Are you?’ she asked him in a low voice. ‘You must have changed, then, Cormack.’

‘We all change, Triss. It’s inevitable—it’s part of life and of growth. Without change, we stagnate and die.’

And suddenly it was more than just reluctance to tell him about Simon; it was fear.

For Cormack was fundamentally a man of morals—an honourable man.

Once, in a rare, confiding moment, he had told her that in the past he had fallen for the wife of one of his greatest friends—something which he had despised himself for doing. He had convinced himself that he had kept his affection secret, but the woman must have guessed—or maybe it had been what she had been praying for herself.

She had waited until her husband was away on a trip, and then had plotted her grand seduction. She had crept into Cormack’s bed late one night, knowing he was at a party, and lain in wait for him in all her glorious golden nakedness.

Triss remembered the look of intense strain etched on his face as he had described how he had quietly asked the woman to leave.

‘But wasn’t it tempting—to let her stay?’ Triss had asked him breathlessly.

Lying next to her in bed, looking so bronzed and so gorgeous, Cormack had given her a look which had made her feel terribly young and terribly naive. ‘Of course it was tempting,’ he had answered quietly. ‘The forbidden always is. But friendship rates highly in my book. Certainly above lust.’

‘Lust?’ she had queried, appalled. ‘Not love?’ He had smiled coldly. ‘How could it be love?’ he asked her. ‘To love someone you have to get to know them properly—and you certainly can’t do that while they are married to someone else.’

Strange that she should remember that conversation now, thought Triss—especially after all this time. Was some self-protective instinct reminding her of just how ruthless and cold Cormack could be when he chose?

Triss had eyes which were sometimes green and sometimes gold—depending on the light, or how she happened to be feeling at the time. In her modelling days she had acquired the skill of being able to make her face reflect whichever mood the art director was searching for, but these days she was badly out of practice.

She let her heavy lids drop, like a demure Victorian heroine, for fear that Cormack’s intelligent, searching eyes would guess at more than she wanted him to.

‘So tell me, have you changed, sweetheart?’ he queried in that lilting Irish accent which managed to be soft and sweet and hard and sexy all at the same time.

‘I suppose I must have done,’ answered Triss slowly, for she certainly could not have imagined taking motherhood so much in her stride when she was living with Cormack.

In fact, when she thought about it now, she had taken nothing in her stride when she’d lived with Cormack. But then she had been completely out of her depth. And, although she’d been earning a fortune from modelling when they had met, her fame had been small-beer when compared with the man who had been dubbed ‘Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor’ by the trade papers as well as the tabloids.

Triss had always been scornful of such extravagant soubriquets, and it hadn’t been until she’d met Cormack Casey that she’d realised that for once the papers had not exaggerated...

CHAPTER TWO

TRISS first met Cormack in the most romantic city in the world.

She met him in Paris. In springtime.

In fact, Cormack told her much later that he would never have written it as it had actually happened—it was so corny that audiences would never have believed it!

But it did happen. Like a dream come true.

Cormack had been commissioned to write a screenplay around a little-known book by F. Scott Fitzgerald which was set in France’s spectacular capital.

For two months he isolated himself from everyone he knew and rented a roomy but fairly basic apartment at the top of an old building which had views of the city to die for.

He mixed solely with the locals, and in eight weeks went from speaking a smattering of restaurant French to being passably fluent—with a very good line in colloquial insults!

For the next two months he infiltrated the expatriate American community in order to get to grips with the characters he was supposed to be writing about. He was fortunate that the American Ambassador just happened to think he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and introduced Cormack to just about every influential American living in Paris!

At the end of it all, his research completed, Cormack was mentally and physically exhausted, and sought a few days of winding down before he went back to his home in Malibu to write his screenplay.

Sitting at a table outside a pavement café in the glory of springtime Paris, Cormack sipped at his demi-tasse of coffee and watched the world amble by, relieved to feel some of the tension ebb out of his body—rather like water being slowly let out of the bathtub!

Immune to the polished sophistication of the native Frenchwomen, he was momentarily arrested by the vision of a woman so tall and so fragile that for a second he blinked, as if he had conjured up a creature from another world.

She was dressed in simple black jeans and white T-shirt, with a matching black denim jacket slung casually over her shoulder. A huge-brimmed straw hat covered with masses of violets was crammed down over her head, and the vibrant colour of the flowers contrasted dramatically with the almost translucent paleness of her skin.

She sat down at the table next to his, but did not appear to notice him—and Cormack was excellent at spotting women who merely pretended not to notice him—and he was fascinated by her abstracted air and her fey, understated beauty.

She pulled a book out—in English, Cormack noted with pleasure—and opened it up, but he was aware that her eyes gazed sightlessly at the pages. When the waiter came to take her order, she struggled so delightfully to instruct him in French that Cormack was enchanted to play the role of translator—and within ten minutes he managed to charm his way through the barrier of suspicion she had erected enough to share her table with her and, eventually, to get her to agree to dine with him that evening.

When he arrived to collect her at the hotel, she looked absolutely stunning, with her hair caught back in a soft French plait and wearing beautifully understated black jersey. Every Frenchman’s eyes narrowed lustfully at the sight of her, while Cormack could not remember feeling quite so elated at being out with a woman.

They ate mussels and rare steak and drank robust red wine in a bistro on one of the tiny uphill streets which stood beneath the mighty shadows of the Notre Dame. He found her relative innocence entrancing and she, in turn, was captivated by his lazy manner, which did nothing to disguise his rather awesome intellect.

They were on their second cup of coffee, with neither of them showing any particular desire to leave, when he asked her, very casually, ‘How much longer are you going to be in Paris?’

At that moment Triss cursed her job, and the commitments which went with it. ‘I leave tomorrow,’ she told him reluctantly, her huge eyes gleaming gold as they reflected the candlelight.

‘Pity,’ was all he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, and left it at that. Maybe he had someone back in the States? A man like Cormack couldn’t possibly be single, for heaven’s sake!

‘Let’s go, shall we?’ he said suddenly, and Triss felt a fierce rush of regret that the evening had to end.

Outside the restaurant, the moon was a gilded crescent decorating a star-splintered sky, and Cormack turned to her and said, ‘It’s a warm night. Shall we forget about the taxi and walk back to your hotel?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled instantly, then wondered if he was expecting to sleep with her. No way, she thought ardently as she stole a glance at that dark, craggy profile. However tempting she might find the prospect.

They talked non-stop on the journey back-about politics and art and whether it was time to legislate against motor cars in major cities—this after a speeding vehicle narrowly missed careering into Cormack’s shins.

He knew that she was a model—just as she knew that he was a scriptwriter—but in the heady anonymity of the blossom-strewn Parisian streets, their other lives seemed curiously unconnected.

And unimportant.

Some sixth sense warned Cormack to behave with the utmost propriety—indeed, he did not even attempt to kiss her as he left her at her hotel, though he sensed that that was what she wanted him to do more than anything else.

And when he did kiss her, at the airport the following afternoon, the world spun on its axis. They both stared at each other in silent amazement afterwards, as if they could not quite believe what had happened, and when he asked her to visit him in Hollywood she shyly said ‘OK’ without really thinking about it.

When Triss arrived back home in England, the episode seemed more like a dream than reality, and she waited to see what he would do next. If anything.

He sent a book.

Not flowers, but a novel he thought she might find ‘interesting’. He was the first man ever to acknowledge her mind rather than her model-girl looks, and Triss was absurdly flattered.

She read the book, was provoked and stimulated by it, and wrote back to tell him so.

He sent another. And another. And then a letter, with an accompanying open-ended air ticket, explaining that he was tied up with a film but that he would love to see her.

Triss did not know which of them was more surprised when she turned up unannounced one day at his Malibu home, and he opened the front door to her wearing ink-splattered white jeans—and nothing else.

There was a long pause.

Well, Triss supposed that someone ought to fill the growing silence. ‘H-hello,’ she said nervously.

He knew much more about her by then. He had asked his agent to come up with anything he happened to have on-a Triss Alexander and had been unprepared for the shock of realising that the sultry siren with the flaming mane of hair she had always kept tame in Paris was the fey, pale beauty who had captivated his imagination.

‘Hi,’ he said, very slowly. ‘So why didn’t you tell me you were a world-famous supermodel, Beatrice?’

Triss had done her homework too. ‘And why didn’t you tell me that you were the enfant terrible of the film world?’

He rubbed at his darkened chin thoughtfully, and Triss found herself simultaneously wondering whether he had shaved that morning and whether or not he intended inviting her in.

‘Does it make a difference, then?’ he quizzed.

Triss shook her head—today her hair was pleated into an elegant chignon with not a single strand out of place. ‘Not to me. And you?’

‘No.’ He stared at her, then suddenly, and without warning, lifted his hand to the back of her head, where he located the pin which held the elaborate hairstyle together and slowly pulled it out, so that the thick, abundant tresses tumbled down the side of her face like a Titian waterfall. She heard him suck in an appreciative breath, saw the way his eyes darkened in approbation.

Her mouth trembled, colour washing over her skin as she realised how much she had missed him. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ she asked, with a boldness which astonished her.

‘Only if you understand that if you set foot over this threshold you’re going to end up in my bed. Probably within the hour—that’s if I can hold out that long.’

If anyone else had said it she would have run a mile, but when Cormack said it...well, hadn’t he just put into words what she had been secretly thinking, secretly hoping for...?

But Triss wanted more than a one-night or one-afternoon stand with Cormack, and instinct told her that tumbling into his bed right now might not be the most sensible thing to do.

So she turned her enormous hazel eyes up at him and smiled, aware and glad for the first time in her life of the sexual power unleashed by that smile. ‘Well, in that case,’ she murmured smokily, ‘you’d better get dressed, hadn’t you? And when you’ve done that you can take me out for lunch. I’ll wait in the car.’ And she turned on her heel without another word.

Cormack was smitten.

He ached like a schoolboy during lunch at his favourite restaurant, where today the food tasted as uninspiring as school dinners. He wanted her so badly.

He had brought her here to try and impress her, but now he cursed himself for his stupidity, resenting the Hollywood big names who trooped over to their table to say hello, wanting above all else to be away from here, so that he could be alone with her again.

Except that he had probably blown it with his crass approach back at the house.

He couldn’t believe that a man of his age and with his experience could have come out with a line like that!

Finally they stood up to leave, bathed in golden sunlight, oblivious to the other diners who watched them so closely, completely unaware of the striking sight they made as a couple.

‘I’ll drop you off,’ he said heavily, trying to smile but failing dramatically. ‘Where are you staying?’

And Triss turned bemused eyes upon him, wanting him so much that she was past caring whether or not it was the right thing to say, because suddenly it was the only thing to say. ‘But I thought I was staying with you,’ she said. ‘Or at least—that was the impression I got earlier. Was I wrong?’

He smiled then, a heavenly smile, which gave Triss a hint of the pleasures to come. ‘Just come here,’ he murmured, and pulled her into his arms.

Triss came back to the present to find herself studying Cormack with apparent interest, her shorn head cocked to one side.

It must be the hairstyle which made her look even more delicate than usual, Cormack decided, emphasising as it did the small, neat features and making her eyes look so huge that you could imagine drowning in them.

‘You were miles away,’ he observed.

‘So were you,’ she said.

‘I was,’ he answered softly. ‘Literally and figuratively.’

‘Oh?’

‘Remembering how we met...’

‘In P-Paris?’ She stumbled stupidly over the words.

He gave an impatient kind of laugh and his blue eyes seared into her, as if something had made him very angry indeed. ‘Unless my memory is defective and we met somewhere else?’

Triss stood up. She hated it when he adopted that terse tone—it was making her feel at even more of a disadvantage than she already did. And just how was she going to tell him about Simon, for goodness’ sake?

She stared into the moon-like face of the grandfather clock as though she were looking at the gates of hell, but at least her face was hidden from him. And that gave her the courage to try and find out what had motivated him into coming to see her so readily.

‘Why did you agree to come here today, Cormack?’

‘I thought I’d already told you that, sweetheart,’ he returned softly. ‘I was intrigued.’

Triss sucked in her breath impatiently. ‘Then let me rephrase the question. What did you expect to happen when you got here? Another night of “spectacular sex”, as you so sweetly put it?’

‘You’re surely not complaining because I saw fit to praise your undeniable talents between the sheets?’ She could hear the mocking laughter in his reply. ‘Don’t twist my words—’

‘I’m not twisting anything,’ he retorted, his voice laden with an undertone of silky menace. ‘But I would be a liar if I denied that I still wanted you, Triss...’

She closed her eyes in despair as she recognised that despite everything which had happened between them she still wanted him too. So badly.

Cormack had risen noiselessly to his feet and had moved behind her, so close that all Triss could hear was the hushed sound of his breathing.

‘You’re all tense, Beatrice,’ he observed quietly, but there was a husky note which deepened his voice into pure allure. ‘Aren’t you?’

She knew that tone—knew what it meant. Cormack wanted her; she could tell from the barely contained edge of hunger shivering in his voice. But then, he always had been the kind of man who could go from normality to desire within seconds...

‘No,’ she answered firmly, aware that she should move away from him. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t. ‘I’m not tense at all’

‘Oh, yes, you are, sweetheart—you’re stretched as tightly as the string of a violin.’ Now he sounded cajoling, using the kind of voice she imagined people must use when they were gentling horses.

’N-no.’ Then, with a hint of desperation in her voice, she said, ‘Stop it, Cormack. Please stop it right now.’ But although her words sounded tough enough she still could not bear to turn round, to be confronted by the hot blue dazzle of lust in his eyes. For if she faced that—then would she not just give in and fall eagerly into his arms?

Cormack did not answer her immediately, just ran his finger very deliberately down the entire length of her long neck, and the effect of his touch on her skin was electric. ‘Just like a swan, that neck,’ he mused quietly. ‘With its pure, clean lines. A thoroughbred.’ He stroked sensually at the soft skin. ‘That’s what you are, Triss. A thoroughbred.’

She shivered at that first contact and felt the memories flooding back—wonderful, unwanted memories that she had tried to erase from her mind for longer than she cared to remember.

Like the first time they had made love.

She remembered shyly telling him that he was the first man for her, thrilled beyond belief to see the look of dark pleasure on his face. In the back of her mind, however, she had been expecting some kind of pain or discomfort—the stuff they always warned you about in all the books she had ever read on the subject.

But Cormack had been so gentle in his passion, such a slow, sure tutor, that she had experienced nothing but the most perfect kind of fulfillment. She had wept in his arms afterwards, her head cradled on his chest. And he had stroked her dark red hair thoughtfully, but had been remarkably quiet for once.

And she remembered the time when he had given her a key to his Malibu beach home, recalling how she had burst out laughing at the tragi-comic expression on his face and how he had then started laughing too, telling her that he was mourning his lost freedom. And with that shared laughter nothing in the world had seemed to matter outside themselves.

Triss felt rooted to the spot now, in that cramped and overcrowded sitting room, with Cormack gently stroking the back of her neck, aware that every second which passed was weakening what little resolve she had left.

‘Come,’ he urged softly, and turned her round to face him. ‘Come here to me, Triss, sweetheart.’

And Triss felt her breath catch painfully at the back of her throat as she stared at him.

She had seen Cormack in many guises—in jeans and scruffy when he was working flatout on a script, in exquisitely cut chinos and shirts of softest lawn when he was taking her out to lunch, or reluctantly tuxedoed for an obligatory awards night. And yet she could never remember him looking more gorgeous or more desirable than he did right now.

But it was more than the striking vision he made, with his dark, tousled hair and the faintly sinister appeal of the black leather he wore. It was the realisation that Simon was going to grow up to be the spitting image of his father.

So tell him, she thought. Tell him! That’s why you brought him here today, isn’t it?

She stared into his blue eyes, appalled when she read the answering glint there.

“Don’t look so horrified,’ he murmured. ”There’s nothing wrong with wanting me to kiss you...’

‘I don’t—’ she started, but it was too late, because he had pulled her into his arms with an urgency she was not used to. Cormack had always taken great pleasure in his ability to control the pace of their lovemaking. He had always seen the delay of his own sexual gratification as something which gave him immense satisfaction. But this kiss was something else—she had never seen Cormack look so rapt and so absorbed and so hungry.

He brought his lips down hard and powerfully against hers, crushing her in his arms so that she could feel his heart beating against her breast—the rapid thundering seeming to symbolise life itself—and Triss found that she was shaking quite violently.

Cormack lifted his head and frowned. ‘Why, you’re trembling, Triss,’ he observed, his own voice sounding slightly unsteady.

‘I know. Silly, isn’t it?’ She rested her head against his shoulder and it felt as though all the troubled times which had passed between them had never occurred. And she was aware that once she told him about Simon she would not have the opportunity to do this again.

‘Why?’ he questioned softly. ‘Why are you trembling?’

Tricky, this one. If she told the truth would she not be revealing her vulnerability where he was concerned? And if she was vulnerable he would be able to hurt her even more than he already had done.

‘Triss?’ he prompted gently.

‘Because it’s been so long,’ she admitted reluctantly, closing her eyes quickly.

‘Since?’

‘Since I’ve...been intimate with anyone.’

‘How long?’ he questioned sharply.

‘Since—that night.’ The night when their son had been conceived.

There was a long, telling silence, and when he spoke his voice sounded unaccustomedly heavy. ‘Me too.’

It should have made her burst with joy, but it had the opposite effect—for it made what she had to do even harder.

He bent his mouth to hers once more, and even as she found her lips opening beneath the persistent coaxing of his she wondered when she might gather together enough courage to tell him about Simon.

CHAPTER THREE

TRISS came up for air, though it wasn’t easy when all she wanted was for Cormack to carry on kissing her like that. In that mad, passionate way—as though he had just discovered kissing for the very first time. ‘Cormack!’ she gasped.

‘Not now!’ he growled, and lowered his head again.

And oh, the sweet power of that kiss threatened to submerge her in its tantalisingly sensual waters. Triss struggled back to reality with difficulty. ‘Cormack, please—’

‘You don’t have to beg me, Triss, sweetheart,’ he murmured, with a trace of that hateful irony. ‘The pleasure is all mine, I can assure you.’

‘But...’ Oh, it was hopeless! Hopeless! Triss found her head tipping back, giving Cormack greater access to her neck, which he was now covering with tiny, tiny butterfly kisses so exquisitely delicate that they made her shudder with frustrated longing.

‘Triss,’ he groaned, and shaped the palms of his hands voluptuously down the sides of her body, as if he were a sculptor creating and forming her out of pliant clay. ‘Beautiful, beautiful Triss. God, but you feel good. So good that I want to eat you up.’

Triss fought feelings of intense desire and intense frustration, frantically sucking in air through her mouth as Cormack cupped one of her breasts through the linen dress she wore. She had forgotten just what a master he was at this. If men could take a course on how to drive a woman out of her head with wanting then Cormack Casey would graduate with honours!

Her hips began to move distractedly, as if of their own accord. Tiny, rhythmical little circles, just designed to bring her into contact with the unmistakable evidence of Cormack’s growing passion.

This had not been what she had planned. She was supposed to feel angry with Cormack, for heaven’s sake. He had let her down in every which way.

She had brought him here today solely with the intention of informing him that he was the father of her child. She had planned to tell him not coldly, or judgmentally, just matter-of-factly. As a teacher would explain something to a class.

But nothing more than that—certainly not this. She ran her tongue over her parched lips in despair as she felt her nipple peak beneath the kneading movements of his fingertips.

She tried one last time. ‘Cormack, this is wrong...’

He stopped then, lifting his dark head to stare at her accusingly, and she found herself dazzled by the brilliance of his blue gaze. ‘No!’ He halted her with a negation that was almost savage. ‘Whatever else may have happened between us this was never wrong...never could be wrong... You know that, Triss. In your heart you cannot deny it.’

She gave up. It was too much to ask—to deny herself what she wanted more than anything else in the world. And why not now? Why not this one, last, glorious time?

Because Triss knew with a certainty which sickened her that Cormack would not make love to her ever again—not once she told him about Simon.

For he was the father of her child. And she knew Cormack well enough to know in her heart that not only would he be livid with her for having concealed that fact, but that he would find it impossible to forgive her for having kept his baby a secret from him for so long.

But hadn’t that been her intention? To hurt him as he had hurt her? What some people might have called revenge, but what she had convinced herself was only right and fair.

‘Triss, let me make love to you,’ he coaxed. ‘What we have between us is too good to throw away. Sure, isn’t it a crime not to when we feel this way about each other?’ And all the while he spoke he was sliding those sensuous fingers over her breasts with such unerring accuracy.

Perhaps another woman with more backbone than Triss might have halted those delicious caresses... might have stopped him from inciting each exquisitely aroused nipple into honeyed life. Would a woman who had not fallen so completely under Cormack’s spell have pushed him away?

Well, Triss was certainly not pushing him away. Instead she was kissing him back. Frantically. Almost as frantically as she scrabbled to unzip his leather jacket, to reveal the muscle-packed chest which the grey cashmere sweater could not disguise.

Her hands burrowed right up beneath his sweater and she homed straight in on those tiny, flat nipples, stroking them in the teasing way he had always adored—and the familiar and intimate touch felt like coming home after a long, long journey.

‘Sweet Lord in heaven!’ He drew in a long, tortured breath. ‘Beatrice...Beatrice. My beautiful Beatrice. Don’t you know what you’re doing to me, sweetheart?’

His words came at her in a haze; he might have been speaking another languages for all the sense she made of them.

She could not speak or hear or think. All she could do was clutch onto him for support while he roughly unbuttoned her linen dress so that her aroused breasts were visible, straining madly against the champagne lace of her brassiere.

She was aware of a silence, and a stillness, and she opened her eyes in alarm, wondering why on earth he had stopped now. And she disturbed an odd kind of watchfulness on his face as he stared at her body.

‘Wh-what is it?’ she managed, from between lips which felt swollen to twice their normal size. ‘What’s the matter, Cormack?’

The rapt look of absorption had given way to one of narrow-eyed but unmistakable approval. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘Then?’

‘Your breasts.’ He dipped his dark head to flick his tongue tantalisingly against the champagne lace which was stretched taut over one nipple. ‘They’ve changed.’

‘Have they?’ she questioned lazily as she allowed him to unclip the bra, so that her breasts sprang free into his waiting hands and he immediately began to caress them.

‘Mmm. They’re lusher, fuller—they look...’

Triss froze as the meaning of his words seeped into her addled brain. Any minute now and he would guess the reason for the change—that she had suckled his baby for the past five months.

But Cormack did not seem to be in the mood for any guessing games—in fact there seemed to be only one thing that he was in the mood for, and he shifted uncomfortably before taking her resolutely by the hand.

‘Where’s the bedroom?’ he demanded, in a voice laden with the heated fragility of sexual tension.

Triss wanted him so much that she could not even summon up the simple co-ordination to lift her hand and point to the far door. ‘Over th-there,’ she whispered falteringly.

Cormack had always been a man to make instant decisions, and there wasn’t a trace of doubt on his face as he led her over to the door and pushed it open with all the force of a barnstorming hero from a stage musical.

He didn’t wait, pause, look at her, question her, quiz her or try to reason with her. He simply pushed her down onto the bed and then followed as if it was his every right to do so. And he kissed her and kissed her until the need in her grew unbearable.

‘Cormack, please—’ Was that really her voice? Triss wondered. That husky, sensual pleading sound—was she making it?

‘Please what?’

‘You know what!’

‘No, I don’t,’ he growled as his teeth made provocative little mock-bites on her earlobe. ‘Not unless you tell me!’

She sensed that if she put into words what she wanted him to do to her, then she might give away how much she feared she still cared for him—despite all her vows and determination to remain immune to the manipulative rogue!

So where did that leave her?

Vulnerable, that was where.

Now he had freed the rest of the buttons of her dress so that it flapped right open, revealing the high-cut champagne lace panties which matched her bra. She brought her knees up instinctively to cover her bare belly, but from the renewed darkening of his eyes she saw that the movement had excited him even more.

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