The music was turned up, glasses refilled and a real festive feeling took over as people got down to some serious dancing before counting the New Year in.
But for Triss it was nothing more than an ordeal to be got through, and by a quarter to midnight she couldn’t take any more. Unobtrusively, she sneaked over to Alastair and asked him to allot her a room as far away from the madding crowd as possible.
‘Stay and see midnight in at least?’ he pleaded gently, but Triss shook her head.
‘I won’t, thanks all the same, Alastair,’ she told him quietly. ‘I have a splitting headache—I’m no fun for anyone tonight.’
Once safely in her room, she heaved a huge sigh of relief, took off every scrap of make-up, untied her hair and brushed her teeth.
I am not going to do anything as predictable as crying into my pillow, she told herself firmly as she pulled her nightshirt over her head. In the past two years I have cried more than enough tears over Cormack Casey, thank you very much!
She took a book from her overnight bag and settled down in bed to read, because although she had made up her mind not to fall to pieces she was realistic enough to know that there would be little sleep for her tonight—not with Cormack settled in bed just yards away.
With someone else? she wondered briefly, but blocked the thought immediately because that was just too painful to contemplate.
She listened to the distant chimes of midnight and the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and then the sounds of people gradually settling down for the night.
By four o’clock the house was completely silent, and Triss was still wide awake.
She slid out of bed, put her head outside the door and listened, but there was not a sound to be heard. Telling herself that a drink would help her sleep, she padded downstairs to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of milk. She sipped it standing by the sink, looking out of the window, noting that the snow had finally stopped falling and that the sky was now clearing. In the distance, the silvery light of the moon was becoming more visible by the minute as the snow-clouds scudded away like jet planes.
After she had drunk her milk, she washed the glass out and stood it on the drainer to dry, and made her way back upstairs.
And there, at the top of the landing, by the wide window-ledge, stood a motionless figure.
Triss took in those shadowed, sharply hewn features, saw the moonlight playing on the muscular definition of his bare skin, and her heart gave a helpless lurch.
‘Cormack?’ she whispered, half reluctantly, as if words might break the enchantment of seeing him there, like that, clad in nothing but a pair of jeans and looking so ridiculously approachable.
‘Hello, Triss.’ His voice was soft, and something in the way he smiled at her made it impossible to do anything other than go over and stand beside him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Watching the moon,’ he told her, but he wasn‘t—he was watching her. He lifted a hand to indicate her free-flowing hair and her scrubbed face. ‘That’s much better,’ he observed.
She certainly wasn’t looking for his approval, and yet the warmth in his voice made her reluctant to say so. She turned to face him. ‘Is it?’
‘Mmm. You look so beautiful when your face is bare.’
And you look so beautiful when your chest is bare, she thought, though she said nothing about that either.
As he watched her intently he reached his hand out towards her arm, and one forefinger lightly stroked the cuff of the thigh-length shirt she wore. ‘And this is mine, isn’t it?’ he asked, a note of surprise in his voice.
In the darkness, Triss found herself blushing. What a complete and utter give-away! Fancy parading around the house at the dead of night wearing this old dress-shirt of his, which she had refused to give up—like a child hanging onto a much treasured security blanket. ‘You gave it to me, remember?’
‘Did I?’ he teased. ‘You borrowed it for a party, as I recall, and never gave it back!’
‘Yes,’ she gulped, overcome with nostalgia.
The silence which followed should have been awkward, but it was not; it was comforting and reassuring and gloriously, gloriously familiar. They stood side by side, watching the full silvery radiance of the moon which turned the snowy landscape into a fairy-tale picture of silver and white.
Triss recalled how they had used to watch the moon in Malibu too, in silence—just like this. Was Cormack remembering that as well? she wondered.
She felt the speed of her heartbeat pick up and begin to pound in her ears, until she was certain that he must be able to hear it too.
‘Triss?’ he said suddenly, quite urgently.
She turned to look into eyes which gleamed with dark, sensual promise and she began to tremble.
Afterwards she would never be quite sure who made the first move. All she knew was that somehow she was in his arms again. He was holding her tightly and she was holding him back as though she could never bear to let him go—and nothing else in the world seemed to matter.
They just stood like that for ages. After a while he took her hand and brought it to his lips and kissed the palm slowly, lingeringly, a question narrowing his darkened eyes. And Triss must have answered it mutely, for he silently led her down the corridor to what was obviously his room.
She made no protest as he quietly closed the door behind them. He did not put the light on, but there was light enough from the moon, and he reached out his hand and moved it slowly down the side of her face, like a blind man reading his way by touch alone.
Her eyes were wide with her own question as he took her once again into his arms and stared down at her in a way which made her begin to quiver helplessly.
‘Cormack,’ she whispered. ‘Should we be doing this?’
‘I can’t not do it,’ he answered simply. ‘Unless you tell me to.’
She shook her head. ‘That isn’t fair!’ she protested. ‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Well, then.’ He smiled, but it was a smile tinged with sadness as he drew her down onto the bed and began to kiss her with all the restrained and sensual exploration that she remembered from the very first time he had made love to her.
Except that this time she knew what to expect, knew that the act of lovemaking itself would surpass all her wildest dreams, and she returned his kiss willingly, eagerly, until she heard the deep sigh of pleasure which meant that he was finding restraint very difficult indeed.
His hands were actually trembling as they peeled the shirt from her body, and she lay naked and bathed in silver moonlight as she watched him kick off his jeans, doing her best not to squirm with impatience until he was back beside her on the bed.
Just before he entered her he told her that he loved her, but Triss scarcely heard him—her body was crying out with so much need for the fusion with his.
It was quite unlike any other time they had been intimate together, and Triss was moved beyond words by the surprisingly slow, erotic coupling which took her to unimagined heights. Cormack was more tender than she had ever known him, and she felt as though he was piercing the very heart of her as her kiss-muffled cries echoed softly around the room.
And I love him too, she thought. Still. More than I have allowed myself to admit. I must tell him...
But in the end she told him nothing—not straight after they had made love, anyway. She was too dazed. Too elated. Too smugly complacent as she lay tangled with him amid the rumpled