And it was the violence which finally convinced Cormack that he must break free.
At sixteen he ran away to Dublin, where he became lead singer with an unknown rock band whose fortunes were to change once the brilliantly acerbic Cormack Casey started penning their songs. In terms of popularity and sales, the band broke every record in Ireland before storming Europe and then, eventually, laying claim to the greatest musical prize of all—the United States.
Triss listened as Cormack explained all this, in his soft, lyrical Belfast accent, her eyes huge and rapt as she stared at him. ‘Why on earth did you leave the band?’ she questioned. ‘When it was going so well.’
‘It’s a young man’s game.’ He smiled. ‘For people who plan to wreck their health! Besides, I get more of a kick out of constructing make-believe characters for the movies. Now...’ His intelligent blue eyes seared into her. ‘Tell me about you.’
‘I—’ She looked up at him, her hazel eyes huge and bewildered as she realised that she actually wanted to pour her heart out.
Men had alternately tried to cajole or drag the story from her over the years, but she had always clammed up in her shame, obstinately determined to tell them nothing. The difference here was that there was something about the soft blueness of Cormack’s eyes which just invited confidence.
But the habit of a lifetime was hard to break and Triss shook her head.
‘Leave it, then,’ he suggested, in a voice so soft and soothing it made Triss want to curl up and purr.
‘I—I want to tell you,’ she began hesitantly.
‘Then tell, sweetheart.’
So she told him about growing up as the daughter of a woman so exquisitely lovely that her beauty had tainted her life for ever. A woman who had been unable to accept growing older, who had seen her only daughter as a threat rather than as someone to love.
‘She loved my brother,’ said Triss, taking a sip from her iced spritzer. ‘He’s a doctor and he’s married now—to another doctor. They’re both doing very well,’ she added quietly.
‘You don’t mention a father in all this.’ Cormack shot her a shrewd look.
She shrugged. ‘That’s because he wasn’t around when I was growing up. He disappeared one day—quite literally, as it turns out—nobody has seen him for years.’
‘What was he like?’
Triss shrugged her narrow shoulders again. ‘He was a glamorous playboy who just happened to lose all his money, and when that happened he lost my mother too.’
‘So how did you survive?’
Triss shuddered as her mind wandered back down forbidden pathways. ‘Oh, there was never a shortage of suitable “escorts” for a woman who looked like my mother. For suitable, read rich,’ she added, unaware of the cynicism which had briefly hardened her voice. But Cormack heard it, and frowned.
‘She lived off men, basically,’ explained Triss, in a forced voice which sounded shaky even to her own ears. ‘She still does. Only as the years go by and her looks diminish, well, her standards drop accordingly. Consequently the men get more and more disgusting. She’s...’ Her voice tailed off in distress, but Cormack did not attempt the false comfort which would have rung so emptily in her ears. ‘She’s living in the South of France at the moment, with a man who made his fortune from manufacturing dog biscuits.’
She blew her nose noisily and escaped to the powder room. When she came back, Cormack was settling the bill, and she looked at him gratefully.
‘OK?’ he queried, and she nodded. ‘We can always have dessert at home, later,’ he added, and to Triss’s fury she found herself blushing.
Now they were driving back in Cormack’s open-topped Aston Martin, with the sun glinting off the Pacific which dazzled in a sapphire haze beside them. Her long hair floated behind her like a bronze banner which gleamed as shinily as the paintwork of the racing-green car.
When he drew up outside the dazzling white house, he switched off the engine and turned to look at her, his eyes narrowed, his expression thoughtful as he took in her tense, hunched shoulders, her tightly clasped hands. To Cormack, her whole body language was yelling, Leave me alone!
‘Changed your mind, sweetheart?’ he enquired softly.
‘About what?’
‘Staying with me.’
‘Would it matter if I had?’ she asked him boldly.
He reached out a hand and freed a glossy tendril of hair the colour of cinnamon from where it clung to the full pout of her lips. ‘Of course it would matter,’ he answered softly. ‘But not in the way you might be thinking.’
‘You’re a mind-reader, are you now, Mr Casey?’
He smiled, and if was the most irresistibly roguish smile that Triss had ever seen. ‘I don’t need to be,’ he said simply. ‘They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, don’t they? And yours are telling me everything I need to know right now, sweetheart.’
‘Which is?’
‘That you want me as much as I want you—’
Triss clapped her palms against her flaming cheeks. ‘Cormack!’ she protested. ‘Don’t!‘
‘Don’t what? Don’t speak the truth?’ he mused. ‘But why ever not? Why stifle emotion with convention?’
Intrigued, she asked, ‘And is that what I’m doing?’
‘Sure it is. You want me to take you to bed, but now you’re having second thoughts—thinking that we haven’t known each other for very long. Or not knowing whether my intentions are...’
‘Honourable?’ she supplied, midway between laughter and indignation.
Humour danced in the bright blue eyes. ‘Well, of course, I can’t promise you marriage at this stage—’
‘That wasn’t what I meant!’ she raged, wondering if she was not protesting a little too much.
‘No? Then what did you mean?’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ she snapped, aware that she was sounding more and more petulant, but annoyingly unable to stop herself. ‘Since you seem to be the self-appointed expert.’
‘Oh, I am,’ he murmured. ‘I am indeed.’ And all conversation ceased when he leaned forward and kissed her.
Triss had never believed the fictional kisses of books and films, which could have a woman swooning helplessly in a man’s arms after just one touch of lip upon lip, but now she became the most fervent convert.
It was magic—like no other kiss she had ever had. So much so that she almost found herself wondering whether Cormack had slipped some powerful aphrodisiac into her drink at luchtime—except that instinct told her he would have neither the need nor the inclination to do something as crass as that.
She felt giddy with the joy and the promise of that kiss—it felt as though little bubbles of happiness were exploding and fizzing around her veins. She felt abandonment wash over her like a tidal wave, and she began to moan against his mouth—and heard his own answering moan, which was tinged with more than a little desperation.
And when the kiss was finally over, and they had managed to tear their lips apart in order to drag some air into their tortured lungs, Triss found that his hand was beneath her thin white dress and nesting proprietorially at the top of her naked thigh, stroking it beautifully.
And somehow her own