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‘Don’t you? Do you think that you are solely entitled to my loyalty, Triss? Even though I had not seen you or heard from you then for almost two years?’
To her astonishment, he settled himself on one of the stools, took a sip of wine and contemplated his glass thoughtfully. When he looked up again his blue gaze was quite steady.
‘It might be easier,’ he told her calmly, ‘if you were able to see the incident within the context of the wider issues at stake.’
‘How dare you
patronise me?’ Triss slammed her glass down on the counter and wine slopped into a claret puddle on the white marble. ‘And what the hell was that remark supposed to mean? Are you trying to blind me with Hollywood psycho-babble now, Cormack? When the bottom line is that you were in a relationship with some—’
‘Helga was not some anything!’ he interrupted immediately, his voice gritty and abrasive.
‘Oh? You’re defending her honour now, are you?’ Triss finally snapped, and all the bitterness and jealousy which had eaten away at her for so long suddenly erupted like a sore left to fester.
‘Of course I’m defending her honour,’ he responded, with a quiet dignity which reminded Triss of why she had loved him so much—though his words absolutely appalled her.
‘Y-you are?’
‘Why on earth not? Or would you expect me to treat a woman I respected badly?’
“Then why didn’t you marry her?’ she cried angrily. ‘If she was so bloody marvellous!’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘Because I was not in love with her—’ their eyes met for a long, tense moment ‘—the way I was in love with you.’
Triss noticed his use of the past tense and could have wept. She drank some more wine instead.
‘Helga was the innocent party in the whole affair,’ he said. ‘You and I had been apart for almost two years when I began dating her. So tell me, was that such a heinous crime, Triss—to want to see someone else?
‘You had quite steadfastly and adamantly refused to discuss what had gone wrong between us,’ he continued, his blue eyes blazing. ‘Our relationship was over—you’d made that quite clear. And, yes, I found your suggestion that we could one day be “friends” an insulting one.’
She began to mop up the spilt wine. ‘You aren’t one of these modern men who believe in a civilised ending to an affair, then?’
‘In theory, perhaps. In practice, not always—no. And certainly not to an affair which had been as passionate and as intense as ours.’
‘That didn’t mean that you had to leap into bed with the first woman who came along!’ she accused him.
‘I did not,’ he emphasised, with barely concealed impatience, ‘“leap into bed with the first woman who came along.” Nor the second, nor the third. Et cetera. Women throw themselves at me every day—and frankly I find it a turn-off. I always have done. I am not promiscuous, Triss, and I never have been. And what is more you do me a great disservice in judging me by the same standard as some of the more questionable escorts of your mother’s—’
‘Just you leave my mother out of it!’ she yelled.
To her surprise, he backed down immediately, holding the palms of his hands up in a placatory fashion. ‘Very well, we’ll leave your mother out of it.’ He threw her a frankly questioning stare. ‘But did you really expect me to forsake all other women for the rest of my life? To carry your memory around engraved on my heart?’
‘Don’t be sarcastic with me, Cormack Casey!’ she warned him.
‘Then don’t be so bloody unrealistic with me!’ he snapped. ‘Just because you and I had split up—that did not mean I intended to remain celibate for the rest of my life! Or was that what you expected, Triss?’
The certain knowledge that he had slept with another woman was like a knife being plunged through her heart. Oh, she knew that it wasn’t logical, and she certainly knew that it wasn’t even fair—but that did not stop the sickening images from swimming before her eyes.
‘Stop it,’ he told her gently, as something in her face must have told him her thoughts. ‘It’s over. It meant—’
‘Don’t you dare tell me it meant nothing!’ she yelled. ‘Helga Summers happens to be one of the world’s most beautiful actresses. So how can it not have meant something?’
He gave her a reproving look. ‘Her beauty has nothing to do with it. And I was not about to say that it meant nothing. Of course it meant something—all relationships do. But that does not mean that it meant the same to me as what I shared with you—’
‘Don’t!’ She tried to clap her hands over her ears but he wouldn’t let her.
‘You will hear me out, Triss Alexander,’ he told her grimly. ‘For once in your life you will face up to facts and not bloody conjecture!’ He pushed her down onto a stool just before her legs gave way.
She raised her head to find him studying her with a concerned and narrow-eyed scrutiny. ‘Oh, what’s the point?’ she demanded wearily.
