She went about her normal routine with a resolutely cheerful air.
She changed Simon and then brought him into her bed with her for his early-morning feed, unbuttoning her scarlet satin pyjamas and latching him onto her breast. It was a moment of pure peace, and she loved this quiet time alone with her son, with just the sound of the birds trilling outside her window in the spring sunshine.
He was glugging away quite contentedly when a slight movement caught her attention, and she glanced up to find Cormack watching them, a look of rapt preoccupation on his face.
He was dressed in nothing but a pair of black silk boxer shorts which left very little to the imagination. From a distance she could observe him almost neutrally in this partially clothed state, in a way which she had been unable to yesterday, when they were in bed together.
Physically, he was as close to perfection as you could get. Broad shoulders and a finely muscled torso with narrow hips and strong, long legs. His chin was darkly shadowed, as it always was first thing in the morning, and it gave him a devilishly sexy look.
His eyes were narrowed, and there was such a look of wonderment on his face that Triss knew she did not have the heart to exclude him from this most intimate part of motherhood. She had excluded him from enough already.
‘Come in,’ she coaxed softly, marvelling at the transformation in him. Normally, just the merest glimpse of her breasts would have had his gaze raking over her with hungry anticipation. But now the expression in his eyes was soft, admiring and full of frank regard—though Triss would have bet her last dollar that if she were to put Simon back down in his crib then the look of hunger would be back in force!
He came to sit on the edge of the bed, looking gloriously unselfconscious in nothing but the silk boxer shorts, and Triss found herself wishing that she had asked him to get dressed before inviting him in!
‘I didn’t realise you were still feeding him,’ he murmured questioningly.
‘Only last thing at night and first thing in the morning.’ She sighed, then said fervently, ‘I hate giving it up.’
‘Then why do it?’
She gave him a long look as she unhooked the baby and transferred him to the opposite breast. ‘Because I’ll probably go back to work soon—in some capacity—’
‘Work?’ he interrupted in a horrified voice, as if she had just broached the idea of opening up a brothel! ‘Do you want to go back to work?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really, no. I seem to have got modelling right out of my system.’
‘Then why even think of it?’
‘Because I need to support us,’ she told him evenly. ‘I need—’
‘I’ll give you all the money you need to stop you from having to go out to work,’ he told her, his mouth tightening with suppressed anger. He shrugged broad, tense shoulders. “Though maybe that was your sole reason for introducing me to my son, Triss? So that I could slip into the role of financial provider?’
‘I don’t want your rotten, stinking money, Cormack Casey!’ she spat back at him proudly, and Simon lifted his head up, momentarily startled, before resuming his blissful glugging.
‘It might not be what you want, sweetheart,’ he declared, a half-smile threatening to curve his mouth as he took in her furious expression, ‘but maybe it’s what you need if it stops you farming out Simon to some child-minder!’
‘Oh!’ Simon had dozed off, so Triss gently eased him away from her, winded him, then put him into Cormack’s arms. ‘Only a man would have the nerve to use such an emotive phrase as “farming out” in connection with childcare! Millions of women go out to work every day and leave their babies—and those babies are thriving! And do you really think I would have someone sub-standard looking after my own son?’
He grimaced, and had the grace to look repentant. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Point taken and noted.’
Triss, who had been ready to launch into another animated defence of working mothers, quickly shut her mouth, the wind completely taken out of her sails by his apology.
‘What shall I do with him now?’ asked Cormack softly, glancing down at the warm, sleeping bundle in his arms.
‘You could put him down to sleep while I shower and dress,’ she suggested. ‘Then we can all have breakfast together, if you like.’
‘Do I have to put him down?’ he queried. ‘Couldn’t he sleep like this for a while?’
Triss looked taken aback. ‘Of course he can—that’s if you don’t mind?’
‘Mind? I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’ Then he grinned. ‘We—ll, on second thoughts...’
And Triss found herself blushing as their eyes met.
That was how she left them, with Cormack holding the baby in the classic rocking position. Now that was one for the family album, she thought wistfully.
She took her jeans, shirt and underwear into the bathroom with her, since she did not want to get dressed in front of Cormack—and she didn’t want to disturb him and Simon by asking him to leave either.
When she had dressed, Triss went and rescued him, taking the baby from him even though he made a half-serious sound of protest.
‘We’ll be down in the kitchen,’ she told him. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ she asked, and then wished she hadn’t, for in the early days she had asked him that very question and the answer had always been the same—‘You!’
The brief clouding of his eyes told her that he had remembered too, but the careless smile which followed drove all other thoughts from Triss’s mind.
‘What does Simon have?’ he murmured.
‘I thought I’d give him scrambled eggs this morning,’ she told him, feeling strangely shy. Something seemed to have happened between the two of them, and some of the old ease and magic was back. And she liked it. She liked it very much.
Cormack gave a roguish smile. ‘Then I’ll have the same as Simon, please.’
Triss went down and put Simon in his high chair, only her hands were shaking so much that she could barely crack the eggs into the bowl. As it was, some of the mixture plopped onto the shiny linoleum floor, and Triss moved to the sink to find a sponge to mop it up with.
She was just rinsing out the sponge under the tap when Simon leaned right over his tray at such a precarious angle that Triss was certain he was going to go hurtling to the floor.
‘Simon!’ she yelled, and rushed from the sink towards the high chair, not seeing the egg white where it lay in an innocently transparent pool.
Her foot went from under her as it collided with the sticky mess and Triss was caught off balance, too startled to have the presence of mind to put her hand out to save herself.
Her last thought before she hit the floor was her baby—nothing must happen to her baby.
‘Cormack!’ she called out, in a thin, reedy voice. ‘Oh, please... Cormack...’ And then the whole world went black.
WHEN Triss came to she was lying down. Not on the kitchen floor, but stretched out on one of the sofas in the sitting room with Cormack hovering over her, his ashen, worried face barely recognisable.
At the sight of her eyelashes fluttering. open he heaved a huge sigh of relief.
‘Triss! Thank