blatant masculinity which was so much part of his appeal.
When he returned, he sat down on the rug in front of the fire and looked at her. ‘You say you don’t want an explanation about that night—’
‘I don’t!’ she put in quickly.
‘Is that because you are determined to think the worst of me?’ he probed quietly. ‘Does it make you feel better to imagine that I behaved like some brainless stud?’
‘Not really.’ And that’s a lie, Triss Alexander, said the voice of her conscience.
‘I think it does,’ he disagreed perceptively. ‘Believing the worst of me enables you to keep your hatred of me alive, doesn’t it, Triss?’
‘No.’
‘Yes!‘ His voice sounded angry now, and his blue eyes were spitting fire. ‘Don’t you think that after everything we shared together you at least owe me the courtesy of listening to an explanation?’
‘I’m listening.’
He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully, for it took him several moments to continue. ‘I met Helga a long time after we split up—’
‘How very convenient for you.’
‘Triss!’ he thundered savagely. ‘You are testing my patience to the extreme! Now, are you going to shut up and listen to what I have to say—or am I going to be forced to assert my mastery?’
Her heart raced and her mouth dried as her body responded automatically to his words. ‘Y-you w-wouldn’t d-dare!’
‘Wouldn’t I?’ Suddenly he smiled and the anger was gone—although the sexual promise wasn’t. ‘No, you’re right—I wouldn’t.’ There was a pause. ‘As I said, I met Helga nearly two years after you and I split up—’
‘And in all that time you never once contacted me!’ she accused him, aware even as the words tumbled out that she was giving herself away.
‘And neither did you,’ he retorted softly, ‘contact me.’
‘But you were the one who said you didn’t want to be friends—’
‘Not didn’t want to be,’ he corrected her. ‘I just felt we couldn’t be. That our somewhat tempestuous relationship was not a particularly sound basis for friendship. And I assumed that the relationship was dead since neither of us had been able to make it work.’
He shook his dark head. ‘I stayed alone for a long time, but when Helga came along she was...’ He shrugged and spread out the palms of his hands rather helplessly.
‘Tell me,’ she said, though the words choked her.
‘Easy, I guess.’ And then he saw her expression and shook his head again. ‘Oh, not in the commonly used sense. I mean that she was undemanding, uncomplicated—’
‘The opposite to me, in fact?’
He did not flinch under her accusing stare. ‘If you like. I certainly wasn’t looking for a replica of the intensity I had shared with you, Triss.’
‘So what happened?’ she demanded. ‘It sounds as though in Helga you found your dream woman.’
He regarded her critically. ‘In theory, perhaps she was. She never answered me back the way you do. And she didn’t have a jealous bone in her body.’
‘So why no happy ever after?’ enquired Triss caustically. ‘Or did your night of sex with me put paid to all that?’
‘You can be such a little bitch,’ he told her softly, and something in his eyes warned her that she really was stretching his patience just that little bit too far. ‘I’m trying to tell it like it was, Triss—not how I would have liked it to be.’
And quite what he meant by that Triss didn’t know—but judging by the look on his face now was not the time to ask him.
‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing actually happened. We just drifted apart, I guess, so gradually that our meetings became less and less frequent. Helga never actually lived with me, and she was based in Paris—’
‘Paris again,’ interjected Triss bitterly, thinking of how they had met. She stared at him, not even bothering to disguise the jealousy in her eyes. She had always thought of Paris as their city.
‘Paris again,’ he agreed, and his face was sombre. ‘It was a totally different relationship from the one I had shared with you. When she was away I never actually missed her—not in the way I missed you.’ He smiled. ‘And Helga wasn’t in love with me either. She always said that she wanted to marry another German. And she has. I’m godfather to their baby, as a matter of fact.’
‘I see,’ said Triss rather faintly. Godfather? Which meant that not only must Helga have the highest regard for Cormack, but her husband must too. What a manipulative Irish rogue he was! ‘Carry on,’ she instructed primly, ‘with your story.’
His face was reflective. ‘I hadn’t seen Helga since October. She’d gone to visit her parents in Germany over Christmas.’
‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What did you do over that Christmas?’
‘I stayed home.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yep.’
Triss’s eyes widened. ‘But why? You must have had millions of invitations.’
He smiled, and it was like the sun coming out. ‘Not millions, Triss. Some.’
‘But you didn’t go out?’
‘I chose not to.’
‘And New Year’s Eve?’
He turned away and poured himself a second glass of wine, so that his face was hidden from her. ‘The New Year’s Eve party was just a spur-of-the-moment thing.’
‘I see.’
He shook his dark head. ‘No, that’s just the trouble—I don’t think you do see, Triss. When I walked into that party, I knew I had got it all wrong and that nothing had changed. That there was still this overwhelming passion which burned deep inside me.’ He challenged her with a piercing blue gaze. ‘And in you, too, however reluctantly.’
‘So you took me to bed, knowing—’
‘You make it sound like an intellectual decision,’ he objected. ‘Which it was not.’
She ignored the interruption. ‘Knowing that you were still involved with Helga.’
‘Knowing that I was on the periphery of involvement,’ he amended. ‘That everything between Helga and me had changed. It was over. It had been over for months.’
‘Had it?’
His gaze was unwavering. ‘Absolutely. She knew it and I knew it—it was just that neither of us had actually got around to putting it into words. So, while perhaps technically I should not have been with you that night, in my heart it felt morally right—and that remained the important thing.’ Although I knew that you would not feel the same,’ he added sombrely. ‘But, oh, Triss, it was right!’
She set her mouth into an obstinate line. ‘Isn’t that just a way of justifying your behaviour?’ she questioned. ‘If it feels good then it must be right?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted eventually. ‘But all I can tell you is that it did feel good. And it did feel right. You know it did. And my son was conceived as a result of it.’ His face darkened and he added bitterly, ‘Or so I now discover.’
She found that her hands were trembling uncontrollably, so that she had to knit them together in a clasp in order to still them. ‘Well, just what did you expect?’ she demanded.
‘I