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Triss fixed him with a long-suffering look. ‘When a man is that rich and that good-looking, most people get to hear of him.’
‘But Dashwood’s proximity naturally had nothing to do with your buying a house here?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Triss exploded. ‘Why should it?’
‘Husband-hunting, perhaps?’ Cormack suggested insultingly.
Taking a deep breath, Triss resolved to keep her cool. ‘I’m not in the market for a husband,’ she told him with icy emphasis.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know that I believe you, Triss,’ he accused softly.
She forced her voice to sound very faintly bored. ‘I’m afraid that your beliefs are your problem, Cormack. Nothing to do with me. You have to turn left here, by the way.’
He complied without a word, although Triss heard him draw in an appreciative breath when he caught his first glimpse of her thirties-style house, with its stained-glass windows and its oak door, and its red-brick walls covered with newly budding wisteria.
‘Is Simon here?’ he demanded as the car drew to a halt by the front door.
‘He’s next door at Lola’s. I’ll let you in, shall I, and then go and fetch him?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Cormack grimly. ‘I’m fascinated to meet this “friend” of yours, whom you see fit to entrust with the care of our son. You must think very highly of her, if you grant her a privilege you’ve denied me.’
‘I don’t want you coming in there with me if you’re intending to make trouble,’ Triss warned.
‘I just want to see him, Triss.’ His searingly blue eyes blazed a question at her. ‘Surely even you can understand that?’
His appeal came straight from the heart, and Triss felt utterly wretched at that moment. She nodded dumbly.
‘Then let’s go,’ he ordered quietly.
They walked silently, side by side, but that was their only concession to togetherness. The tension and the animosity sizzled between them like sparks crackling from a bonfire. They passed through Triss’s informal gardens and into the rather more elaborate plantings of Lola Hennessy’s house next door.
Cormack raised his eyebrows as he took in the imposing white building which made Triss’s house seem almost tiny in comparison. ‘This is some place,’ he commented drily. ‘Your friend Lola is clearly a successful woman. What does she do?’
Lola was an air hostess who had inherited the house from a wealthy man almost forty years her senior. But if Triss told Cormack that he would start leaping to all sorts of unsavoury conclusions! And, quite honestly, Triss was finding the situation difficult and fraught enough; without fanning the flames of his contempt even further.
Anyway, Lola was successful though not in the way that Cormack meant. She had a job she adored, a busy social life and the fulfilment of working with one of the country’s most popular charities. She also had an outrageously attractive Welshman named Geraint Howell-Williams hovering in the background, though Triss was aware that he had been giving Lola considerable problems.
They reached the front door, which was flung open before either of them had a chance to knock. In the hall stood a young woman in her twenties wearing leggings and a loose denim shirt. Her gloriously curly dark brown hair was tied up with a red chiffon scarf, although wayward curls were escaping everywhere, and her bright blue eyes sparkled like gems in the sunshine.
‘Triss, hi!’ she exclaimed, with a huge smile. ‘I saw you coming down the path! We just weren’t expecting you back so soon!’ She looked from one to the other, the smile dying as she must have registered the decidedly frosty atmosphere between the two of them.
‘We—we wanted to get back,’ stuttered Triss awkwardly. ‘Is
everything OK?’
‘Everything is fine—’
‘How’s Simon?’ asked Triss quickly.
‘Simon’s just wonderful,’ Lola reassured her firmly. ‘I can hardly bear to give him back to you. Come and see.’
Triss forced herself to try and act normally, though she found herself stupidly wondering whether it was obvious that she and Cormack had spent the afternoon in bed together. She could feel the unusually high colour in her cheeks which would not seem to fade. “This is Cormack Casey,’ she said, rather hesitantly.
Lola held her hand out immediately. ‘Hello, Cormack.’ She dimpled, as if it were every day that she met friends’ estranged lovers who happened to be world-famous scriptwriters! ‘I saw your last film three times! I loved it—especially the bit where she discovered that the letter had never been sent.’
