He seemed quite relaxed and Cass wondered if he’d underplayed his baby-minding capabilities.
‘Ready?’ he said when he saw her.
‘Yes.’ She watched as he placed Ellie in her car seat and clipped her in.
He took her bag from her and, carrying it and the car seat, waited for her to precede him out of the house. He gave her no chance to close the door on him, had she wished.
Cass walked reluctantly down the path, then allowed him to lead the way to his car. This time it was a four-wheel drive. She climbed into the passenger seat while he stowed her bag and fitted the baby seat.
‘Seat belt,’ he instructed as he clicked his own into place.
But Cass was still having doubts. ‘Look, surely there’s someone else who’d help you care for Ellie. What about girlfriends?’
‘Your sister’s?’
‘No, yours.’
‘Mine?’ He raised a quizzical brow. ‘What makes you think I have a girlfriend, singular or plural?’
Cass wondered whom he was trying to kid.
‘You’re rich,’ she replied bluntly. ‘Rich men are never short of girlfriends.’
Dray’s lips twisted slightly at the insult before he decided to pass it off.
‘Well, I must be a sad case,’ he drawled back. ‘Stacks of money and still no girlfriend. Maybe I should take an ad out in the personal column: “Unattractive but extremely wealthy male seeks gold digger for insincere meaningless relationship.” What do you think?’
Cass thought he was taking the mickey and didn’t bother to reply.
It was he who concluded, ‘No, on second thoughts, I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.’
His pointed tone told her that that was how he’d come to regard their affair.
Cass was still thinking of a suitable response when he suddenly leaned towards her. She flinched rather obviously and was left feeling foolish as he drew the seat belt round her and clicked it into place.
He waited until he’d pulled away from the kerb before commenting, ‘If you suspect this is all part of a grand seduction plan, then let me disillusion you. I don’t intend to leap on you the moment our niece is asleep. Last night was a…an aberration.’
‘An aberration?’ Cass was stung into retorting. ‘Well, thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better.’
His gaze switched momentarily from the road ahead. Deep blue eyes questioned the reason for her upset. Hadn’t he just promised to be a gentleman?
‘I can’t do anything right by you, can I, Cass?’ he said at length. ‘Why is that?’
Cass shook her head, refusing to answer. How could she? Even she didn’t fully understand her conflicting emotions.
After that conversation lapsed, each occupied by their thoughts.
Cass’s mind stretched back to the end of their affair. It seemed almost as if he wanted to rewrite history, but events were surely indisputable.
They’d had a date mid-week to go out to a restaurant. She’d rushed home from day shift at the supermarket to shower and change. She’d been doing her hair when Pen had turned up, unannounced.
Just back from honeymoon, she’d hot-footed it into London, demanding to know what Cass had been doing, dating her new brother-in-law.
Cass had been calm, almost indifferent, in the face of Pen’s temper tantrum. By now her feelings for Dray had overridden every other consideration.
Pen had changed tack, switching to sisterly concern. She hadn’t wanted to see Cass getting hurt. Dray Carlisle was all very charming but he had a low boredom threshold. It was almost a family joke—the fact he never stuck with the same girl for very long. Had Cass imagined she would be any different?
Cass had barely listened. She’d been so sure that what Dray and she had had together was special. When her taxi had appeared, she’d grabbed her coat and bag and left Pen to talk to thin air. Pen had called something after her, but she’d already been out of the door.
When Dray had failed to show at the restaurant, Cass had assumed at first that he’d simply been late. She’d waited and waited. An hour had slipped by. She’d sat in the bar area and watched the door until she’d finally had to accept he wasn’t coming.
It had been only then she’d begun to wonder: had Pen been trying to tell her something? She’d gone home by train, her mind dwelling on Pen’s words. It had been ten by the time she’d arrived at the house but Pen had still been there.
‘Dray didn’t turn up,’ she said shortly. ‘Has he called?’
‘I’m sorry, Cass.’ Pen grimaced. ‘I was meant to pass on the message but you rushed off. Dray asked me to tell you he couldn’t make it.’
‘Oh, Pen!’ Cass was a little cross, but relieved, too. ‘Is he ill? Perhaps I should phone him.’
‘No, he won’t be there,’ Pen relayed. ‘He’s gone away.’
‘Away where?’
‘To Paris.’
‘On business?’ Cass willed her sister to say yes.
Pen hesitated, then shook her head.
Cass read sympathy in Pen’s expression and concluded, ‘He’s with someone else, isn’t he?’
This time Pen gave a bare nod and Cass felt her world slowly implode. She didn’t ask Pen for details, couldn’t bear hearing them. When Pen said she was staying over, Cass went on up to bed, intent on hiding her feelings.
It was the first of many nights that she cried alone in her room. She was hollow-eyed in the morning, when she went to work.
Pen spent the next few days in London with her. Tom was abroad on a sales trip and she didn’t want to go home to an empty house. Cass didn’t feel much like confiding, not when she couldn’t be sure that Pen would keep things to herself, but possibly Pen realised how upset she was. She behaved in an unusually considerate manner and as the weekend approached—a weekend off that Cass had been meant to be spending with Dray at North Dean—it was Pen who suggested Cass should go and visit their mother’s cousin in Yorkshire.
Cass welcomed the idea of a change of scene and took holiday due to her. When she finally returned to London, she’d chalked Dray Carlisle up to bitter experience.
She didn’t expect to hear from him again. Then, out of the blue, he phoned. It was two weeks after their break-up. She was still hurting but all her love for him had gone.
He said, ‘Cass, we have to talk,’ without the slightest sign of remorse in his tone.
She replied, ‘No, we don’t,’ and put the phone down.
She wondered now if her refusal to speak was his reason for accusing her of ending their affair. Rubbish, of course. He’d ended it by going to Paris with someone else.
If she could just remember that—the pain and jealousy he’d caused her—she would surely be safe. For it wasn’t something she ever wanted to relive.
She tore her mind back from the past and stared ahead into the night as summer rain beat heavily on the windscreen. She didn’t realise they’d arrived at North Dean until he turned into the drive.
She half expected him to desert her the moment he’d carried the bags inside, but he didn’t. He looked after Ellie while she made up some bottles in the kitchen, then he watched her give Ellie her final milk feed of the day.
Cass pretended to be unaware of him, even as she tried to guess what he was thinking. Was he asking himself how he’d ever become involved with someone like her? Or was he simply checking that she really knew how to care for Ellie? After all, she’d ostensibly had a baby, one who had died.
She wished she’d never allowed him to believe that, but it seemed too late to deny it.
‘I’m going up,’ she eventually said, unable to stand those penetrating blue eyes on her a moment longer.
‘Goodnight.’ He acknowledged her departure but made no move to follow.
It was a repeat of last night, bathing Ellie, getting ready for bed, lying in the adjoining room while her niece slept next door.
Only this time she lay awake, listening to sounds in the night, wondering if there�
�d be a footstep outside her door.
At first Cass imagined she was dreading it, but, as seconds turned to minutes then hours and she knew she was to be left alone, the frustration gnawing inside her told a different story.
Finally she stopped lying to herself and faced the truth. Three years ago she had loved Dray Carlisle. She had loved him despite every good rational reason not to. And three years on, nothing had changed.
She was his for the taking.
CHAPTER NINE
EXCEPT he didn’t take her. He had every chance as her visit extended to one week, then two, while a permanent live-in nanny was sought, but it seemed that overnight he had lost interest.
It had to be one of life’s little ironies: when she’d finally accepted that her feelings for this man were the same as they had been three years ago, he was suddenly impervious to her.
Perhaps she should have been grateful. Another affair might have left her more devastated than the last. But it was hard to feel grateful when, in keeping his physical distance, he also seemed to have undergone a personality change.
He was once more the Dray she’d fallen for, the man she’d found intelligent and witty and thought-provoking, the man who could make her mad and make her laugh almost simultaneously, who matched the strength in her character so she didn’t have to temper it.
Of course she was suspicious. Why the change? Because he needed her, she supposed. He’d hired a temporary housekeeper and Jill, a mature children’s nurse, to look after Ellie during the day, but night-times remained Cass’s territory. Fortunately Ellie slept through or Cass would have never coped with the long, demanding days at the practice where she was training.
Cass could have walked out, of course. She’d already stayed longer than they’d agreed. The routine, however, suited her. It took less than an hour to reach work—not in the sports car, but a hatchback he’d rustled up from somewhere—and she spent most days shadowing one of the senior doctors, an extremely pleasant woman who maintained enthusiasm for the job despite many years in general practice. Cass felt certain she’d picked the right career path and, though her days were busy, she still had energy in the evenings to bath and play with her baby niece before putting her to bed. Dinner she ate with Dray and they talked over their days like friends and the only problem she had was hiding her real feelings.
Meanwhile several nannies had been interviewed and none had proved suitable.
Well, that wasn’t strictly correct. Dray had insisted Cass approve his choice and a couple had passed muster in her book, but, when it got down to it, he turned out to be the more exacting.
So far girls had been discounted as too talkative, too immature, too insipid and potentially too unreliable. It was gradually becoming evident that, as an employer, Dray did not suffer fools gladly.
‘She’s out,’ he declared as they finished interviewing another potential candidate during Cass’s afternoon off.
The girl, a twenty-four-year-old, showed every sign of being smitten, only not by Ellie, lovely baby though she was.
‘Why exactly?’ Cass wondered if he’d noticed the girl’s attraction to him or had he another reason.
‘She’s too…’ He searched for an appropriate word.
Cass hid a smile, prompting, ‘Too…?’
‘Lightweight,’ he finally decided on.
‘Lightweight?’ What was he looking for in a nanny? He’d already discounted a perfectly pleasant young woman because she’d struck him as too intense. ‘I thought you wanted someone with a less serious attitude to life.’
‘Yes, well, there’s a middle ground between frivolous and angst-ridden,’ he responded dryly.
Cass agreed, although she wouldn’t have called their last candidate frivolous, just a trifle gushy.
‘So, let’s see,’ she reflected on his objections to date, ‘we want someone young but mature, someone smart but not a clothes-horse, warm but not sentimental, responsible without being overly serious, and prepared to commit to an indeterminate length of service as a mother substitute for Ellie while retaining a certain amount of detachment and respecting your privacy within the household… Have I missed out anything?’
He heard the irony in her voice and it was a measure of their improved relationship that he chose to laugh rather than retaliate to the criticism.
‘No, that about sums it up,’ he confirmed with a slanting smile. ‘You think I’m asking for too much?’
‘Just a bit—’ she nodded ‘—especially as you’re not offering permanence of employment.’
‘I can’t until Tom decides what he wants to do.’
‘True.’
Cass knew Tom had returned to work but he had yet to visit the baby whom he now knew to be his.
‘When did he last see Ellie?’
‘The day after she was born.’
‘She may have ceased to be real to him.’
‘Quite possibly…but he refuses point-blank to come here.’
Cass frowned. ‘I thought you’d settled your differences.’
‘Not altogether.’ A brief hesitation followed before he admitted, ‘Tom still imagines I had an affair with his wife.’
Cass’s stomach curled into a knot. Lately she’d avoided thinking about this scenario.
‘What about you?’ He watched her closely. ‘What do you think?’
Cass was no longer certain. She wanted to believe he’d never even looked at Pen but wanting didn’t make it the truth.
‘I don’t know,’ she said at length.
His mouth twisted. ‘Still guilty until proved innocent. Well, don’t expect me to mount a defence.’
Because he couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? Cass turned questioning eyes on him.
He met her stare, undaunted, and it was Cass who eventually looked away, scared of betraying her feelings for him.
He muttered something under his breath, then pushed back his chair. He’d crossed to the door before she realised his intention.
‘There’s still another girl to be interviewed,’ she relayed.
‘You do it,’ he dismissed. ‘I can’t be trusted.’
‘I didn’t say—’ Cass tried to backtrack but he’d already gone, closing doors none too quietly behind him.
Cass was left to conclude what she could from his reaction. He was either the world’s greatest actor or he had never had an affair with her sister and his refusal to say so outright was merely a product of anger and pride.
Till then Cass had considered things from her own point of view. Once her lover, he had moved on to Pen. Jealousy had made her accept it as fact, from the flimsiest of evidence.
But this ultimate betrayal wouldn’t be of her, but of his brother Tom. And how likely was that? The first time she’d ever met Dray Carlisle his concern had been for Tom and what kind of girl he was marrying. The second time had been at the wedding and, though he must still have had reservations, he’d put a good face on it for his brother’s sake. He’d asked Cass to the funeral on behalf of Tom and made her stay for him, too. He had taken in Ellie and was still looking after her, albeit by proxy, until Tom got his act together.
It seemed he’d do anything to protect his younger brother, so why imagine he would dream of hurting him in this most painful of ways? Would Pen have been so irresistible?
Cass supposed that was why she was jealous. Common sense told her Dray Carlisle wouldn’t have had some offhand affair with his brother’s wife. If it had happened, it had been something deep and intense and unstoppable. If it had happened…?
That question rattled around in her head until the next candidate for nanny appeared—a definite maybe—and was still rattling around later when Dray telephoned.
‘Dray, look, about earlier—’ She wanted to make up.
But he was brusque and businesslike, cutting through her with, ‘Tom’s finally agreed to see Ellie. I’m sending a car. Could you or Jill bring her to the main office?’
‘I…Yes, of course.’
‘Good
. The car should be there in half an hour.’
His tone was cool and distant and he rang off before she could speak again.
Cass might have felt sorry for herself, if she’d had the time. Instead it was a rush to help Jill, Ellie’s nurse, wash and change the baby, and dress her in the cutest of outfits for this momentous meeting with her father. This preening left her a little out of sorts but ready for a nap, which she duly had in her car seat in the back of the company vehicle sent by Dray. Cass went with the baby as Jill had been promised an early finish that day.
Cass had never been to Carlisle Electronic Systems before. They were waved through a security checkpoint and drove up to a large modern office block of dark-paned glass. Beyond it lay the works, with original brick buildings jostling side by side with newer sheds of aluminium and steel.
Cass woke Ellie gently when they drew into a parking space; fortunately the brief nap had left her in a smiley mood.
Babe in arms, Cass followed the driver inside. He went past the reception desk without explanation but Cass was conscious of drawing curious looks. They proceeded along a corridor to a lift marked ‘Private’ which rose to the fourth floor, then walked out to a central area occupied by two women at desks.
One of the women dismissed the driver before buzzing through, ‘Your guests are here, Mr Carlisle.’
‘Fine,’ was buzzed back, ‘send them through, Joan, then you and Carol may finish for the day.’
This obviously came as a surprise to Joan and Carol, it only being three-thirty, but neither argued.
Joan came out from behind her desk, a smile encompassing Cass and the baby, and ushered her to a door marked Drayton Carlisle, Managing Director.
Cass found herself in a large office, its plate-glass windows giving a panoramic view of the site beyond.
The man at the desk stood, acknowledging her appearance with a slightly raised brow. ‘I thought you might leave it to Jill.’
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