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.
‘The point is that our lives are irrevocably linked—through Simon—whether you like it or not. And we need to discuss topics which have been swept under the carpet for much too long.’
‘Like?’
‘Like the night of his conception, for example.’
‘No—’
‘Yes!’
Triss closed her eyes but that made it even worse, for the memories clicked sharply into place—like a camera which had just been focused properly.
She tried to recall just how she had felt at the time, and the conflicting waves of misery and elation came sweeping back to swamp her...
WHEN Triss had split up with Cormack, she had been determined not to become a wet blanket as so many women did when love failed to live up to their expectations.
She did not need a man to define her! she decided. And she had lots and lots of good things going for her—a successful career, her youth and her vitality.
She had only ever rented apartments before, and so the first thing she did when she arrived back from Malibu, with all her belongings in tow, was to begin looking around London in earnest for a place to call her own. More importantly, a place which would have no connection whatsoever with her erstwhile lover.
After a great deal of searching she found exactly what she was looking for. It was relatively small—especially if she compared it with what she had shared with Cormack, so she made an effort not to—only a two-room flat plus kitchen and bathroom, but its beauty was its position. It had an uninterrupted view over Regent’s Park which made Triss feel as though she was living in the middle of the country instead of minutes from the centre of London.
She flung herself into decorating it with a passion and soon it was completed in the soft, restful shades of blue and cream she loved so much.
So she had her home and her work. The only area of life which she seemed to be missing out on was a busy social calendar. And this was simply unacceptable—at least according to Triss’s brother Michael and his wife Martha.
Michael and Martha were doctors who lived on the outskirts of London, and they both nagged Triss to go out with a gentle persistence which gradually won her round to their way of thinking.
Maybe they were right. After all, she couldn’t sit around like a hermit moping for Cormack for the rest of her life, could she?
‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Michael demanded one day.
‘I will go to the very next party I’m invited to,’ Triss told her brother solemnly.
‘Promise?’
‘Cross my heart.’
As it happened, the next party she was invited to was on New Year’s Eve. Triss drove across London for afternoon tea with Martha and Michael, and they quizzed her about the location.
‘It’s near Brighton—an enormous white house overlooking the Downs,’ Triss told them.
‘And whose party is it?’ queried Michael.
‘You remember Alastair McDavid?’
‘The photographer?’
‘Mmm. He’s just finished decorating the house and says he wants to invite every person he’s ever liked!’
‘So why you?’ joked Michael, and was rewarded with a long-suffering glare from his sister.
‘Sounds glittering,’ remarked Martha.
‘Hope so,’ said Triss—and she meant it. She intended to have a good time tonight—even if it killed her!
She pulled out all the stops and dressed up for the party as she had not dressed up for a long time.
She dug out a glittering gold-beaded mini-dress and some outrageous thigh-high gold leather boots, sprinkled with silver stars, which she had bought on her last trip to Paris.
She decided that she would look like a Christmas tree if she left her hair loose, so she piled it into an elaborate chignon and found earrings which were a cascade of silver stars and matched the detail on her boots.
Like most models, she tended to play her make-up down when she went out more to give her skin a rest than for any other reason. But tonight she needed the make-up—needed it as a mask to hide behind.
She applied blusher and a provocative brush of scarlet gloss on her lips, and used a dusting of gold powder on her eyelids which made her eyes look huge and dazzling—like a cat’s caught in the headlights of a car.
When she had finished she blinked bemusedly at herself in the mirror—because the creature staring back at her was the catwalk Triss: highly glamorous and more than a little distant. It was, she knew, a look which threatened all but the most confident men.
Good! she thought gleefully. She needed any social comeback to be gradual, and the last thing she wanted tonight was unwanted men homing in on her with seduction in mind.
She shuddered a little, wondering if she would ever be able to contemplate the thought of intimacy with a man who wasn’t Cormack without feeling violently ill.
It was a wild late December night when she started off with a wind-chill factor which promised snow and the usual gloomy predictions from the weatherman, and advice to people not to leave their homes unless their journey was ‘absolutely necessary’.
Well, Triss had decided that her journey was absolutely necessary. Necessary to her sanity, that was! She was still recovering from the forced jollity of Christmas, when she had missed Cormack quite unbearably and had spent too much time scanning the post every morning for a card that never came.
The party was glittering, as predicted, though Triss saw few faces she recognised—which was a relief. People she knew were still fascinated by her affair with Cormack, and always seemed to want a blow-by-blow account of why it had floundered. And she still found that too painful to relate.
She moved around the room in her glittery gold dress with unconscious grace, sipping her champagne and nodding politely as people spoke to her—until the unbelievable happened and Cormack walked into the room.
And Triss wondered whether she would ever be able to formulate a sentence again.
What on earth was Cormack doing here?
He looked directly across the room at her and Triss stared back, her mouth opening to form a dazed ‘O’ shape. It was so corny she could have screamed—if she hadn’t been so busy feasting her eyes on him, and marvelling at how wonderful he looked.
So why was it, she wondered, that he could wear black jeans and a black cashmere sweater and look an absolute knockout? Like sex on legs. While the other men who had obviously gone to loads of trouble and were dressed in formal evening attire—well, they just faded into the background in comparison!
Oh, it’s hopeless, Triss told herself fiercely. Absolutely hopeless. You are not to compare him with the other men, and you are not to talk to him either.
So they both played an elaborate charade. Triss pretended to ignore him, spiritedly entering into conversation with everyone or rather anyone other than the tall, brooding man with the black hair who was attracting every available woman to his side, like wasps around a jam-jar.
Triss tried her best not to glower as the women hovered around him unashamedly. Although she did have to admit that Cormack appeared, at least, to be totally unmoved by all their attentions. He just stood there on the opposite side of the room to her, looking so