AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Cormack was standing there looking absolutely scrumptious, and Triss felt her heart sinking with despair. He had no right to look that good, she thought to herself. No right at all!
He had changed from the black leather and was dressed now with an almost quiet conservatism—which, conversely, only made him look all the more elementally sexy: pristine white jeans and a slubsilk shirt in palest blue, with a much darker blue sweater knotted casually around his neck. From his finger swung a soft navy jacket.
His blue eyes glinted, although Triss could not be sure if it was with devilment or irritation.
‘Finished?’ he queried softly, and Triss realised to her horror that she had been ogling him like a groupie!
‘Come in!’ she said hastily.
He entered the hall with a thoughtful kind of dignity, as if he had not been there earlier that day, and Triss felt unaccountably nervous. She noticed, too, that he carried a brown leather holdall, presumably containing enough clothes for...how long?
‘Have you eaten?’ she babbled.
‘No.’ He put the holdall down by the coat stand and hung up his jacket. ‘Have you?’
She shook her head. ‘I could cook us something...’
‘Or we could ring out for a pizza or a curry?’ he suggested.
Triss shook her head again. She thought of the forced inactivity while they waited for the food to arrive—and wait they would certainly have to. Delivery companies always had tremendous difficulty finding houses on the estate, since each one was tucked away so discreetly.
‘I’d rather cook,’ she told him. ‘There’s plenty of food. Come through to the kitchen—it’s this way.’
‘I know,’ he reminded her gravely. ‘I was here earlier, remember?’
‘Yes, of course!’
In the kitchen, Triss felt momentarily nonplussed, wondering if her hands would stop trembling enough for her to be able to chop up anything at all. ‘What do you want to eat?’
‘Don’t mind. Heat up a pizza or something.’
But that was the last thing she wanted to do. If she provided him with instant food, then it would leave all that time dragging interminably while it heated up. And they would either be left swopping polite, meaningless pleasantries, as they were now, or hurling bitter recriminations at each other across the room.
At least if she cooked she could keep herself busy—wouldn’t have to stare into those beautiful blue eyes which reminded her with a pang that was almost unbearable of just what she had lost.
She stared at him rather helplessly. ‘Would you like some wine?’
‘Please. Want me to open it?’
She nodded, fished out the best red she could find in the rack and handed it over to him.
He extracted the cork and half filled the two glasses she had pushed across the counter towards him. There was a slightly awkward moment when she lifted her glass to toast him—more out of habit than anything else.
His mouth curved into a sardonic line. ‘What would you like to drink to, Triss?’ he enquired mockingly. ‘To secrets?’
‘Or to betrayal?’ she countered sweetly.
‘And how am I supposed to have betrayed you?’
‘There is no supposed about it!’ she snapped, taking a huge slug of wine which made her feel better immediately. ‘You did betray me, Cormack!’
‘You mean that I made love to you when I was involved with another woman?’
‘Damned right I do!’
‘I see. You don’t think that if I betrayed anyone it was Helga? She was, after all, the woman I was having a relationship with at the time. Not you.’
Triss stared at him in shocked disbelief. ‘I don’t believe you just said that.’
