‘Me.’ He nodded.
The fact wasn’t of much importance to Cass but she wondered if her sister knew it.
‘Possibly Tom has been reticent on the subject,’ Drayton Carlisle continued smoothly, ‘but I feel one should be straight about these things.’
He smiled as if they might have reached some understanding but the smile never reached those chilly blue eyes.
Cass checked she really had understood. ‘Let’s see if I have this right. You want me to toddle off home tonight and tell Pen who’s holding the purse-strings, while you sit back and hope she transfers her affections elsewhere. Is that straight enough for you?’
She raised challenging green eyes to his, but this time he surprised her with a dry laugh.
‘Frighteningly accurate,’ he conceded with the slight inclination of his head, before drawling on, ‘I wonder if the expression too clever for your own good has ever been run past you.’
‘Once or twice,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t let it bother me…insecure men have never been my thing.’
He laughed again, any insult bouncing off him. It was hardly surprising. This handsome, he’d probably never had a moment’s self-doubt.
She was aware of his eyes doing a quick inventory, looking beyond her scraped-back hair and the shapeless nylon uniform she wore.
‘So, what kind are?’ he asked, and this time his interest was personal.
‘Why?’ Cass didn’t want to play these games.
‘No reason.’ He shrugged. ‘I just wondered if there’s a man in your life.’
‘Several,’ she claimed rather than tell the sad truth. ‘They’re queuing up, in fact.’
He followed her glance towards the crowded checkout tills inside and laughed in reply. ‘I’d better let you go, then. When are you finished?’
‘Eight… Why?’
‘I thought I’d take you for a drink.’
He smiled. It was slow and amused. Cass wondered how many women had fallen for just that smile.
For a mad moment she was tempted. Perhaps it would be fun, cutting him down to size.
Then she remembered. ‘I can’t.’
‘Or won’t?’ he drawled back.
It really was ‘can’t’. After the supermarket Cass went on to a night shift at the Happy Hamburger.
But Cass was unwilling to explain herself and shrugged instead. ‘Whichever.’
He seemed unmoved, muttering, ‘Another time.’
Just words, Cass assumed, until their eyes met, trading silent messages, and she realised he meant it. There would be another time. He would make sure of that.
For a moment the promise—or threat—held her there, fascinated when she should have been repelled, then he was gone and only the scent of male power remained.
Too late for a clever put-down, even if she could have thought of one. She consoled herself with the thought that their paths were unlikely to cross again.
Of course she relayed their conversation to Pen, only Pen didn’t listen. Or didn’t appear to. Instead she looked like the cat that’d licked the cream and boasted that she could handle Dray. Although Cass repeated content and underlying meaning, Pen’s confidence remained. In fact, with breathtaking ego, she suggested that Drayton Carlisle’s objections were rooted in jealousy because he’d dated her first and was still interested.
Pen clearly believed this, and, worse, seemed excited by the prospect. Cass tried to talk sense to her, to say without actually saying it that a man like Drayton Carlisle—smart, mature, attractive—might want slightly more from a female companion than teenage youth. Pen, in turn, accused her of jealousy, too, of being piqued because he would never look at her.
Normally Cass quit arguments with Pen when they descended onto such a petty level but this time she fought back and admitted that Drayton Carlisle had done more than look—he’d asked her out.
It stopped Pen in her tracks and she just stared at Cass for a long moment, as if she were a stranger, before giving a caustic laugh and claiming Drayton Carlisle had been amusing himself.
Cass, who’d already worked out that possibility, didn’t feel like thanking Pen for underlining it, and, for once, was the one to walk out in temper.
Pen realised she’d gone too far and later issued quite a sweet apology. She hadn’t meant the comment personally. It was just that Drayton Carlisle had a bad reputation where women were concerned and she’d hate for Cass to be one of his victims. She sounded so sincere that Cass accepted this explanation and they made up.
They’d never really fallen out again but she’d still pretty much lost her sister from the day three years ago when she’d married Tom Carlisle. Sometimes they’d met up in London after Pen had spent the day shopping (it seemed that Tom’s allowance had not been stopped) and Cass had tried to make the right noises when Pen had shown her the latest bag or must-have shoes. It had been hard, however, as designer labels had been of minimal interest to Cass while the accompanying price tags could have brought tears to the eyes.
Cass had returned to her studies, by then, and had a mounting overdraft despite moonlighting at a pizza parlour. Of course she could have asked Pen for money. Once or twice Pen had offered. The trouble was Cass had never seen it as Pen’s money. It would always be Carlisle money and the idea of Drayton Carlisle discovering she’d accepted a handout had kept her from doing so. Not that Pen had ever mentioned her brother-in-law. She’d known it had been a taboo subject with Cass since the time…
Cass didn’t complete the thought but was dragged back into the present by the insistent ringing of the telephone. She guessed who it would be before she picked up the receiver but she was ready for him now. There was nothing like a trawl through the past to harden the heart and stiffen the spine.
‘It’s Drayton,’ he announced briefly.
She was even briefer. ‘Yes.’
‘The funeral has been rearranged for Thursday,’ he relayed. ‘Tom confirmed your sister’s preference for cremation.’
‘Right.’ Cass remained noncommittal.
‘You will go?’ he added in equally restrained tones.
If he’d issued a command, she might still have refused, but guilt and duty had been working on her since last night.
‘Yes, I’ll go,’ she agreed simply.
‘Good.’ He sounded satisfied.
‘How’s Tom?’ she asked, genuinely concerned.
He hesitated, then admitted, ‘Distraught.’
It was more honest than he’d been last night. She wanted to ask more, to ask about the baby, but wouldn’t let herself.
‘In fact, Tom’s very anxious to see you,’ Dray Carlisle continued in the same vein. ‘If you could stay after the funeral, I’d…I’d be grateful.’
Cass frowned down the phone line. Polite on the surface, it was clearly forced. For Tom’s sake. But why?
‘I’m sorry. I’m on duty in the evening.’ It was the truth.
‘I see,’ he accepted it, as he revealed, ‘Tom tells me you now work in a hospital as an orderly.’
An orderly? Six years’ slog and study dismissed in one word. Thank you, Pen. Why hadn’t she told them?
‘Something like that,’ she replied because it was easier than explanations.
‘Which hospital?’
‘Why?’
Cass wondered whether he doubted that she worked in a hospital at all.
‘I thought I could drive you back down after the funeral,’ he explained, ‘if you were prepared to stay and talk with Tom for a while.’
Cass frowned once more. Not at what he was saying, but what he wasn’t. If Tom wanted to talk, why hadn’t he called himself? And why had Big Brother volunteered, when it was obviously choking him to be conciliatory?
‘I don’t know.’ She had very unsettling memories of North Dean Hall, country seat of the Carlisles. ‘I can’t be late.’
‘On the day of your only sister’s funeral,’ he clipped back, ‘I don’t think anybody will be too critical of
your timekeeping, do you?’
That was if she told them, which she hadn’t and didn’t plan to. Bad enough that this man thought she was unnatural. She couldn’t and wouldn’t expose her grief to the rest of the world.
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong.’ She thought of Hunter-Davies, the consultant for whom she currently slaved. He wouldn’t listen to excuses, tolerate mistakes or accept anything less than total commitment. ‘My boss wouldn’t care where I’d been, and, as I’m coming to the end of my contract, I need a decent reference.’
‘Contract?’ he echoed with renewed suspicion. ‘What exactly is it you do?’
It was too direct a question to duck, and, anyway, wasn’t there a chance he’d discovered the truth?
‘I’m a doctor.’ There was an element of pride in her voice.
She expected him to be at least mildly impressed. After all, he’d pretty much written her off as a no-hoper.
But he merely responded, ‘Okay, so don’t tell me,’ assuming she was being sarcastic.
Damn him. Was it so unlikely?
‘I’ll make sure you’re back on time,’ he went on. ‘In fact, I can send a car to collect you in the morning.’
‘There’s no need,’ she told him coldly. ‘I’ve said I’ll come.’
‘I wasn’t doubting it,’ he replied heavily. ‘I was trying to be helpful, save you relying on the vagaries of public transport.’
It was possible, Cass supposed, but then she remembered the last time she’d let him help her. There was always a motive behind Dray Carlisle’s apparent kindness.
‘Thanks all the same,’ she muttered back, ‘but I think I can cope with the train. I do, most days. In fact, it may come as a surprise to you, but a large section of the population rely on public transport.’
‘Really!’ he feigned surprise, then exclaimed dryly, ‘Goodness, how the other half live!’
He wasn’t serious, of course. He was just trying to wrong-foot her, borrow her lines before she could use them.
‘Well, far be it from me to relieve you of your hair shirt,’ he added in his deep drawl. ‘Would collecting you from the train be permitted?’
Oddly Cass didn’t mind his sarcasm. At least it was honest.
‘Strain getting too much for you, Dray?’
‘The strain?’
‘Of being pleasant to me.’
A moment’s disconcerted silence followed, and then he actually laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, it was. I see you still prefer plain talking, Cassie.’
Cassie. The name struck chords. Perhaps conjured up by her slip, calling him Dray. A reminder that for a brief moment in time they’d been close.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ she threw back.
‘Nothing at all,’ he conceded, before dropping his voice to a lower, more insidious tone. ‘In fact, why don’t we go the whole distance, Cassie, and stop pretending we’re strangers?’
Just words but they had their effect. Twenty-six years old and blushing like a schoolgirl. God, she was pathetic!
She took a deep, steadying breath and reminded herself he couldn’t see her blushes. He could only hear her voice, cold as ice as she responded, ‘Who’s pretending? You don’t imagine my sleeping with you makes you any less a stranger.’
There, she’d said it. It was out in the open. He had no power over her now.
A silence followed, as if she’d shocked him, but he came right back at her with, ‘Don’t worry, you and your sister shattered any illusions I might have had in that direction.’
The illusions had been hers as Cass remembered. She’d been a fool and Pen had wised her up.
‘Still, I suppose I should be flattered you even recall our tryst—’ he used the word in a purely mocking vein ‘—considering the many that have undoubtedly followed.’
Many? Cass could have challenged with ample justification. There’d been only one. A student doctor and he’d been another unmitigated disaster. But did she want him knowing just how limited her private life was?
‘I keep a record,’ she claimed instead. ‘You’re under D…for Disappointing.’
It was a put-down, so why did he laugh?
‘Are you sure it wasn’t D for Devastating?’ he suggested with his usual drawling arrogance, then cut the ground from beneath her by murmuring, ‘That’s what I have you under.’
Cass’s face flamed once more, as a shutter flickered briefly open on a picture of two bodies intimately entwined, and she wondered why she’d ever started this game of truth.
She stopped it abruptly by saying, ‘Well, now we’ve completed that trip down memory lane, do you think we could get back to the matter in hand? Burying my sister, that is,’ she added for both their benefits.
‘Of course.’ He didn’t argue with the change of subjects. Perhaps he regretted the deviation, too. ‘Phone me later with the train times and I’ll send a car to the station… I’m ordering the wreaths tomorrow. I can arrange one from you, if you wish.’
‘No, I’ll do that.’ She didn’t want any favours from him.
‘All right… Is there any song you wish to suggest for the service?’ he added with surprising generosity.
Cass knew her sister’s favourites but none was appropriate for the solemnity of the occasion and she said, ‘Not really. None you could play at a funeral.’
‘Right, I’ll just pick a couple of traditional hymns,’ he concluded.
Dirges would have been Pen’s comment and Cass was prompted to say, ‘Why don’t you ask Tom if he can think of anything she’d have liked?’
There was some hesitation before he answered obliquely, ‘Tom’s attention is focused on the baby at the moment.’
The baby. Her niece. Cass could have asked how she was. It would have been the natural thing to do. But any details and the baby would begin to be real for her.
He was clearly waiting for her to ask. When she didn’t, he volunteered. ‘She’s out of the incubator and doing well.’
‘Good.’ Cass sounded detached, and was determined to remain so.
He asked outright, ‘Would you wish to visit her while you’re up?’
‘There won’t be time,’ she replied, avoiding point-blank refusal.
But he heard it in her tone, anyway, and remarked, ‘I’d forgotten. Pen said babies weren’t your thing.’
Cass frowned. Why had Pen said that? It wasn’t true at all.
‘I don’t imagine they’re yours, either,’ she countered rather than deny it, then, feeling the conversation was becoming too personal once more, switched to saying, ‘That’s my pager just gone. I have to use the telephone, so if there’s nothing else…’
‘Your pager?’ He was obviously wondering why she needed such a thing.
Cass, having found the article still clipped onto the waistband of her trousers, put it on to test, then held it against the receiver so he could have a quick blast in his eardrum.
‘My pager,’ she repeated heavily, before muttering a terse, ‘Bye.’
She put the telephone back on its hook, then took it off again just in case he redialled. If he did, he’d get the busy signal, supporting her story.
Not her story, her lie, she corrected herself. Just one more to add to the series she’d told the Carlisles, if only tacitly. How she wished now she’d pressed Pen to be honest with Tom, to admit that she’d had that first baby. If she had, perhaps her sister might yet be alive.
But Pen had convinced Cass that, if she let her secret slip, there would be no marriage and, though, at a month short of eighteen, her sister had been ridiculously young to wed, it had seemed a better option than her vamping around on the nightclub scene. When Pen had finally brought Thomson Carlisle home to meet her, Cass had played her part beautifully, being warm and welcoming to a young man who had seemed naive compared to his brother, and doing her best to pretend along with Pen that she’d been the sweet innocent she’d appeared. It hadn’t been so hard because Cass had believed Pen had been at heart.
Cass’s heart had plummeted. She’d almost come round to being pleased at the idea of the marriage and now this bombshell.
‘No, it’s not enough,’ she had to agree with Pen.
But it wasn’t what Pen wanted to hear, as she wailed back, ‘What would you know? You’ve never been in my position. No one’s ever wanted to marry you!’
Typical of Pen in crisis; Cass was too used to such remarks to let them hurt.
‘I’m not going to argue with you, Pen,’ she responded softly. ‘You’re right. I’m probably sitting on the shelf already, but I’d sooner be on my own than live, day in, day out, with a man I didn’t love or respect.’
‘Who says I don’t love him?’ Pen protested mournfully. ‘Just what I expected—you’re trying to talk me out of it!’
‘No, I’m not.’ Cass gazed steadily at her sister. ‘I want what’s best for you, that’s all. It’s what I’ve always wanted.’
Cass’s tone was so gentle Pen looked briefly ashamed. ‘I know that really. I suppose I’m being a cow.’
Cass pulled a face. ‘A little bit of one—a calf, maybe.’
It wasn’t much of a joke but they both laughed and it eased the tension slightly.
Then Pen said simply, ‘Tell me what to do, sis.’
But Cass had no magic answers. ‘I can’t, Pen. I wish I could. Only you know how you feel about Tom—’
‘I do love him,’ Pen insisted, ‘but, well…next to Dray, he seems such a lightweight.’
‘Oh, Pen,’ Cass groaned aloud. ‘You don’t really have your eye on his big brother, do you?’
‘Of course not.’ The denial was slow in coming and didn’t quite ring true, especially when Pen ran on, ‘But he did fancy me at first. I know he did. If only I hadn’t told him I was sixteen—’
‘Hold on,’ Cass cut in, calculating as she did so, ‘you must have been seventeen and a half by then.’
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