‘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 cool and aloof, like some dark, beautiful statue.
And it was not until supper was being served that she actually spoke to him. Or rather he spoke to her.
She was standing at the end of the line, trying to decide if she would be able to eat anything without choking on it, when she heard a familiar deep voice behind her.
‘So who are you trying to impress tonight, sweetheart?’ came that distinctive Irish accent.
Triss whirled round and her heart began to pound uncomfortably against her ribcage as she registered how close he was. ‘Well, it certainly isn’t you!’
He merely shrugged. ‘Oh, I guessed that all right. For if you were you wouldn’t have slapped two tons of make-up on your face like that. And what in the name of God did you put it on with, Beatrice? A trowel?’
Triss drew her shoulders back and gave him an icily sarcastic smile. ‘That’s what I like to hear, Cormack—you entering wholeheartedly into the party spirit—I don’t think! More like a lead balloon!’
In a frozen silence they glared at one another, but their animosity only seemed to enhance the charge of sexual tension which crackled between them like electricity.
He drew in a deep breath, like a person facing a particularly unpleasant endurance test. ‘So how are you, Beatrice?’ he asked heavily.
What was he expecting to hear? That she was as miserable as sin? That she was missing him like mad? That she despaired of ever being able to feel a tiny fraction of affection for another man?
‘I’m fine!’ answered Triss, a determinedly bright smile on her face. ‘Absolutely fine!’
He nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, the word sounding as if it was being dragged painfully from him.
The silence which followed was unendurable. Close up, Triss found herself wanting to run her fingertips over the shadowed curve of that strong jawline. She felt her hands actually begin to tremble with the urge to do so. And she knew she had to get away before he began to suspect how she still felt about him.
‘Excuse me,’ she told him shakily, ‘but I really must get myself some food.’
‘Of course,’ he answered formally, and she noticed for the first time how pale he looked. ‘I could use a drink myself.’ And he turned swiftly on his heel and left the room without another word.
After that, the party was ruined for Triss. Although she had planned to stay the night, for two pins she would have left right then. But the snow which had been nothing more than a chocolate-box flurry when she had arrived had been pelting down in thick and steady earnest as the party had progressed.
At one point four of the men, including Cormack,