‘What’s wrong?’ He caught her arm before she could move away. ‘Don’t tell me you’re having regrets?’
She shook her head. Her only regret was loving him too much.
‘I’d better see if Ellie’s all right.’ It was a patent excuse to get away.
It hadn’t worked last night and it didn’t work now. He leaned across her to pick up the baby monitor from the bedside cabinet. The green lights were on, showing the battery was still active. The absence of red lights and any sound indicated that Ellie was still asleep.
‘She’s fine,’ he reassured.
‘Look,’ she tried again, ‘I don’t want to argue—’
‘Good,’ he cut in and, looping an arm round her neck, kissed her hard on the mouth, ‘because I can think of much more interesting things to do.’
So could Cass and that was the trouble. One night and she was in danger of being enslaved again. She remembered the pain when she’d lost him three years ago. She had to protect herself.
‘I can’t do this, Dray.’ Her eyes appealed for him to understand, to let her go.
He realised she wasn’t talking about making love. They’d done that virtually all night.
She clutched a dislodged sheet and tried to slide out of bed but he held her fast.
‘Do what?’
‘Get in too deep.’
‘Too deep?’ An edge had crept into his voice.
‘Emotionally,’ she added lamely.
For a moment he looked stricken, then his face became a mask of anger, and Cass was left thinking she’d imagined his first reaction.
‘So what was last night about?’ he demanded. ‘Just sex again?’
‘I—I…’ Cass took the easy way out, lowering her eyes as she agreed, ‘I suppose so, yes.’
She didn’t witness his reaction this time. She felt it as long tapering fingers crushed the bones in her arm before suddenly releasing her.
‘Then go—’ his voice was now a harsh whisper ‘—get the hell out!’
She heard his pain. It matched her own. But hers came from love whereas his…
She raised her eyes back to his but he was already turning away from her, drawing back the cover to swing his legs out of the bed. He didn’t bother with clothes. It was a short walk to his en suite bathroom. He’d closed and locked the door behind him before Cass had time to reply.
She was effectively dismissed.
Initially she was too shaken to move. She’d felt a need to escape but now he had opened the cage, she no longer wanted to fly away.
What had she done? If she’d kept quiet, they might have had weeks, months, even a year together. That was better than nothing, surely?
She’d decided, yes, when she heard the shower going. He was washing himself clean of the smell of their love-making. He’d forgotten her easily last time. It seemed he would forget her easily now. Didn’t that tell her everything?
She felt tears begin to slip down her face. She heard the shower stop as suddenly as it had started and that gave her the impetus to move.
She wrapped a sheet round her nakedness and retrieved her clothes from the floor before making a bolt for upstairs.
She was still using the nanny’s room next to Ellie’s. There was no sound from the baby yet, so she did as he had and took a shower, before dressing in jeans and T-shirt. She placed her luggage holdall on the bed and emptied her underwear drawer.
She got no further. The tears started again and, blinded, she sat on the window-seat. It wasn’t a matter of having nowhere to go; she could easily find a bed and breakfast in Slough. It was finding the will to leave.
The door opened and closed behind her. She didn’t turn. She knew it had to be him. She thought he would go away if she didn’t speak but he crossed the room.
She pressed her face to the window-pane but couldn’t hide her tear-stained face.
‘You’ve been crying.’ He sounded surprised.
Cass took refuge in anger. ‘Full marks for observation, none for sensitivity.’
He didn’t rise to the bait, adding simply, ‘I don’t understand you.’
That made two of them but Cass didn’t want to try analysis.
‘You shouted at me,’ she offered by way of excuse.
‘You dumped me,’ he pointed out in return.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she insisted, weary of telling him this.
‘Wasn’t it?’ He scrutinised her tear-stained face. ‘It certainly felt that way.’
‘I explained the past,’ she reminded him.
‘It’s last night I’m talking about,’ he countered. ‘When are you planning to explain that? In another three years if our paths happen to cross?’
Cass felt her throat tighten. She didn’t want to go through with this. She didn’t want to walk away from this man. If she did, a lifetime of regret would follow.
‘It wasn’t just sex. It was…’
Love. She couldn’t say the word. He would laugh in her face. But she had to say something to repair the damage between them.
He waited. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her.
‘I do have feelings for you,’ she admitted almost formally, ‘and I would like to pursue the relationship for a while.’
His brows drew together. He hadn’t anticipated this volte-face. ‘Define a while.’
‘What?’ She blinked at his businesslike tone. ‘I—I don’t know. A month or two. Longer, perhaps.’
‘Be specific,’ he said with the same steeliness.
‘How can I?’ She wondered what he expected.
He told her. ‘Name a date.’
‘A date?’
‘When you intend leaving.’
Cass stared up at him. Was he joking?
‘I need to know,’ he added, deadly serious.
‘Why? It’s odds on you’ll leave me first.’
‘No, I won’t.’
He said it as if it was a simple, inconvertible truth, but Cass couldn’t see how he could be so certain.
‘Is this some kind of game?’
‘No. Why, is it to you?’
‘No… Is it because of Ellie?’
‘Ellie? What has she to do with anything?’
‘I won’t leave you in the lurch with her,’ she promised, ‘if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘Ellie doesn’t come into this,’ he denied. ‘Tom will be taking Ellie home as soon as he can find suitable childcare.’
‘Oh, that’s good.’ She was genuinely pleased for father and daughter.
‘Do you really imagine that’s why I’ve kept you around,’ Dray continued with an edge of exasperation, ‘as a cheap alternative to a night-time nanny? I can afford a professional for that.’
And for pretty much anything else, Cass supplied the unspoken words for herself, and felt a little foolish.
Dray reached down and, taking her hands in his, he drew her to her feet. He held her at arm’s length as he told her, ‘I want you to stay for me.’
It cost pride to say, and the pulse at his temple betrayed feeling. Did it matter if it wasn’t love?
‘Then I’ll stay,’ she echoed him.
He smiled but only briefly. ‘I still need to know how long.’
Cass shook her head in frustration. They were going round in circles.
‘But, Dray,’ she appealed, ‘I’d just be plucking a date from thin air and it wouldn’t mean anything. This isn’t business, with contracts that people can be held to.’
She was trying to talk sense but it prompted the opposite reaction.
‘We could make it like that. We could make it exactly that. A contract.’
‘A contract? What kind of contract?’
‘The obvious kind when two people commit to staying with each other.’
‘Are you talking about…?’
No, he couldn’t be.
‘Marriage.’
Yes, he could. Yes, he was.
‘This is crazy!’
Cass’
s response had his mouth going into a rigid line.
‘Why?’
‘Come on, Dray. You and I, marrying—it just is.’
Cass was surprised he even needed to ask. She wasn’t trying to offend him. She seemed to be succeeding, however.
‘You think we’re so incompatible?’
‘Of course we are. Let’s face it. You’re rich, I’m poor. You’re…’
Cass meant to make a list but ran out after the first item.
He raised a slightly mocking brow and she added rather lamely, ‘We’re hardly suited.’
‘Because I’m rich and you’re poor? Is that it?’ It did sound a pathetic excuse the way he said it. ‘Well, does it matter? Marry me and you’ll be rich, too.’
‘You think I’m after your money?’ Cass was stung.
‘Of course not.’ He sighed in reply. ‘I was merely stating a fact, that it wouldn’t be to your disadvantage.’
‘And what do you get out of it?’ She couldn’t see it would be to his advantage to marry her. ‘I’d not be much asset as a corporate wife and my housekeeping skills are minimal.’
He thought briefly before replying, ‘Good company, great sex, and a couple of children if things work out.’
Cass still wondered if he were joking but no laugh followed. She’d asked him a question and he’d answered it. It was not what she’d expected.
‘You want children?’
‘It’s an option.’
‘With me?’
‘That’s the general idea. When you’re ready, of course. I realise you have a career to establish.’
It seemed as if he had it all planned, but Cass was struggling with the notion he’d want to marry her, far less have her bear his children.
‘So, what do you think?’ he added at her growing silence.
Cass thought that he’d taken leave of his senses. Or maybe she had, even hesitating. Perhaps she should march him to the nearest church and hope for a happy ever after. The trouble was, even in love, she was a realist.
‘Isn’t this all rather impetuous? We’ve only spent one night together.’
‘I imagine I can trust my own judgement without needing a lengthy courtship,’ he claimed with a touch of his more usual arrogance. ‘I’m thirty-six, I run a fairly successful business and I’ve been with a wide and varied collection of women—your sister not included.’
Cass blushed at the final comment, accepting how foolish she’d been on that score.
He gave her a testing look. ‘You do believe me, I hope. Even if I’d found her attractive, I would never have gone with my brother’s wife.’
Cass nodded. She appreciated that now. Jealousy had affected her judgement. It was a destructive emotion that made people act badly.
She thought of Pen and the lies she’d told to keep her apart from Dray. Quite terrible lies. They’d come from jealousy. Perhaps Pen had regretted them, had really meant that ‘Sorry about the Dray business’ in her final letter, but Cass wasn’t quite ready to forgive her.
‘Pen found you attractive,’ she told Dray now.
He shrugged in reply. ‘Not as attractive as she found our cousin.’
‘Your cousin? You mean Simon?’
‘The same.’
‘He was the one she…?’
Dray nodded. ‘I had some suspicion and he confirmed it. He feels awful about it now but, at the time, he was quite besotted with your sister. I imagine she came as light relief after years of being married to Camilla.’
‘I’m still surprised. I wouldn’t have picked Simon as Pen’s type, at all.’
‘Perhaps she just liked the attention.’
It was a fair suggestion. It seemed Dray had understood her sister quite well.
‘I’m really sorry—’ she closed her eyes briefly in shame ‘—the things Pen did to your family.’
Dray gently squeezed her arm. ‘Come on, it wasn’t your fault.’
But Cass saw it differently. ‘I should have tried to stop her marrying. I knew she was too young for commitment.’
‘And you?’
‘Me?’
‘Are you too young?’
‘I was never young. That’s what Pen used to say. Old maid material from the word go.’
Cass relayed this without thinking. It had actually been a joke between Pen and her and she tried to laugh it off now, but he didn’t laugh with her.
‘You won’t be if you marry me,’ he pointed out in all seriousness.
‘Is that a good enough reason?’ Her eyes told him it wasn’t.
Recollections of Pen’s marriage made her realise none of the reasons he’d given would compensate for lack of the most vital ingredient.
‘Perhaps not,’ he conceded, thinking on the same lines, ‘but I believe, in time, if you give it a chance, love would come.’
The word ‘love’ seemed strange on his lips, yet he’d used it once before to her.
That love, assuming it had been real, had long since died. Could she take a lifetime of waiting for it to grow again?
Cass shook her head. She wanted no illusions between them, no false promises.
‘Love is either there or it isn’t. I don’t think you’re going to wake up one morning, Dray, and discover you’re in love with me. I don’t believe it happens that way.’
Cass knew it didn’t. She’d loved him three years ago, she loved him now, she’d never stopped loving him. Only pain and pride had masked it for a while.
‘You missed the point,’ replied Dray. ‘I wasn’t talking about me.’
‘You weren’t?’ Cass frowned. He was right. She had missed the point.
‘I already wake up every morning in love with you,’ he told her quietly. ‘I thought you understood that.’
Cass looked stunned. He was wrong. She had understood nothing.
‘You’re in love with me?’
He couldn’t be.
‘Isn’t it rather obvious?’
Not to Cass. Not even now. He sounded more irritated than anything else.
‘I… But…the way you’ve been over the last few months.’
‘It was hard—meeting you again, discovering my feelings were still raw.’
‘And after Pen’s funeral,’ Cass recalled, ‘you couldn’t wait for me to be gone.’
‘It alarmed me how easily I’d lost control,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I was immune but I wasn’t. I decided to keep away for my own self-preservation, but when your sister’s letter turned up I wanted to test my reaction again.’
‘You were very rude,’ Cass reminded him but there was a smile in her voice and her heart suddenly felt light enough to float away.
‘I was very jealous of your doctor friend,’ he grimaced back.
‘There was no need to be,’ she confessed in turn. ‘Not of him or anyone else. One brief, failed affair, that’s all I’ve had since you, and that was only for therapy.’
‘Therapy?’
‘I wanted to get over you.’
‘And did you?’
She looked at him steadily, hiding nothing. He just had to use his eyes and see the naked love on her face.
Dray saw all right. Believing was the problem.
‘Did you?’ he repeated, needing to hear the words.
‘I thought I had,’ she ran on, ‘but, after a brief remission, it turned out to be an incurable condition. I guess I’ll have to manage it with regular intervention.’
It took Dray a moment to decipher this metaphor and his face moved between a frown and laughter, then back again.
‘Bloody doctors,’ he said in a half-growl. ‘May I have that in plain English, please?’
‘Yes, okay. I love you, Dray Carlisle. I loved you three years ago. I love you now. I’ll always—’
Cass didn’t get a chance to finish as he dragged her into his arms and began to kiss her breathless. When he’d finished, she still couldn’t speak because her heart was full.
‘You’d better always love me,’ he told her fie
rcely, ‘because I won’t let you go again.’
‘I will,’ Cass said with utter certainty.
‘So, church or register office?’
‘What?’
‘I assumed you were practising for our wedding.’
There was a teasing note in his voice, but underneath he was deadly serious.
‘Shouldn’t we live together for a while?’
‘Why?’
It was a good question.
He followed it with, ‘Are you certain you love me, Cass?’
She nodded but it was hardly necessary. Now there was no need to hide her feelings, there was love in every look she gave him.
‘Let’s make the commitment, then,’ he added quietly.
He was asking her to put her trust in him, to accept the strength of his love and have faith in her own. It was the way people used to do it. They met, fell in love and married, expecting ups and downs but accepting they would stay together for ever.
‘Yes, let’s,’ Cass agreed softly in return.
They did so, one short month later. It was a modest church affair. In some ways it wasn’t the happiest day of Cass’s life because too many memories of that other wedding intruded, and, despite everything, Cass still grieved for her little sister and a life cut dramatically short.
But one moment would remain with her. It was the defining moment after they’d exchanged vows and he’d slipped the ring on her finger and they’d looked at each other. No one else saw it, just them. It was there, however.
The promise of love everlasting in their eyes.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0298-6
HER SISTER’S BABY
First North American Publication 2001.
Copyright © 2000 by Alison Fraser.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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