Sleeping Partners. Helen Brooks

reminded herself, and there wasn’t a malicious or nasty bone in Cassie’s whole body, but she did go on at times!

      ‘But having a career doesn’t cut out meeting Mr Right,’ Cassie began fervently, only to stop and lift her head as she added, ‘That’s Guy and the kids home, and just when we were having such a good chat.’

      ‘Pity,’ Robyn agreed drily, noting with a pang of guilt that the sarcasm went completely over Cassie’s head.

      At least Guy’s return from his Sunday afternoon visit to the park with the twins focused Cassie’s attention on tea and baths for her exuberant offspring, but once Robyn was on her way home to her little flat above the office of her PR business in Kensington later that evening, she found her thoughts returning to the conversation with her sister, or to one particular part of it anyway.

      Clay Lincoln. If she shut her eyes—which would be very dangerous considering she was driving her little blue Fiesta—she could see him as clearly as anything. Black hair, ice-blue eyes and a smile to die for—or so she had thought once, she corrected herself swiftly. Twelve years ago to be exact, when she had been a very young and silly sixteen and he had been a devastingly experienced twenty-three.

      He had been at university with Guy and so had briefly been part of her sister and brother-in-law’s circle. She had idolised him from afar as a spotty adolescent just going into her teens when Clay had spent time with Guy and his friends in the university recesses. If he’d deigned to speak to her at all it had been with the sort of indulgent kindness most adults applied to children.

      And then her spots had cleared up and she had had the brace off her teeth and had learnt how to manage her riotous mass of curly hair, just in time to be Cassie and Guy’s bridesmaid when her sister had got married.

      Her stomach turned over and she breathed deeply, willing the memories back under lock and key. It worked usually; she kept the little box in her mind labelled Clay Lincoln closed at all times having learnt from past experience that she only had to relax her guard for a while and the lid flew open, regurgitating all the pain and humiliation. Tonight, though, seemed to be an exception.

      She brought the car to a halt at some traffic lights and opened the window while she waited for the lights to change, breathing deeply again of the mild June air which was laden with the peculiarly distinct smell of the city.

      It had all happened so long ago, she told herself firmly. She had been a different person then, coping with rampaging hormones and tumultuous emotions under the fragile exterior of burgeoning womanhood. Being tall and slender she had looked older than her sixteen years but the childish heroworship with which she had adored Clay had been there still under the surface. And she had been so thrilled, so elated when she had looked at herself in her bridesmaid finery and seen a slim young woman who had looked every day of twenty or so. After the years of spots and braces it had gone to her head.

      She shut her eyes tightly, gripping the steering wheel with knuckles that turned white. She had played with fire, manipulated it even, and she had been badly burnt. It had been her own fault, all of it, but the resulting scars were still tender and had shaped the person she was today in a way she could never have imagined that summer’s day so long ago.

      As an irate horn behind her brought her eyes snapping open she saw the lights were green and in her hurry she stalled the engine, causing the car behind her to emit another loud blast.

      Damn! Her cheeks were scarlet by the time she moved off. She hadn’t stalled a car in years and it was all the more galling that it had happened through thinking about Clay Lincoln! How could just thinking about him reduce her to a flustered sixteen-year-old schoolgirl instead of the cool, sophisticated woman of the world she now purported to be?

      She bit her lip hard, angry with herself and the world in general and especially Clay Lincoln. Ruthless ice man that he had been. She repeated the thought for extra emphasis before she determined to put Clay back where he belonged: in the box in her mind with his name on it and with the words, The past—dead and buried, in great red letters beside it.

      It was just beginning to spot with rain when she drew up outside the narrow, terraced, three-story property she had purchased five years before, courtesy of an inheritance left by her maternal grandmother. Her mother had been an only child but after Robyn’s grandfather had died her parents had made it plain they preferred any inheritance to be split between their two daughters rather than having anything themselves.

      Consequently both Robyn and Cassie had been the sole recipients of their grandmother’s estate, which had afforded the two women a very nice nest egg of some one hundred and fifty thousand pounds each. Cassie had been planning to start a family and she and Guy had decided to keep a portion of their windfall for all the expenses that would entail, just buying an estate car and banking the remainder of the money. But Robyn had put every penny of her hundred and fifty thousand pounds into buying her first home which had mean her mortgage was gratifyingly small.

      The house had been well-maintained but was dark and gloomy, and so she’d ploughed much of the salary she’d earned working as a PR assistant for a record company into it over the next two years, always with a view to the future. And the future had meant her own PR firm, which she had achieved with Drew as her assistant just as Cassie had finally fallen with the twins after two years of trying.

      The ground floor of the house was one long open-plan office, the floor above, Robyn’s bathroom and kitchen, and the top floor her living quarters which again was one long room with a bedroom area at one end. She had painted this room in pale buttery yellow and had sanded and varnished the floorboards. Due to it being south-facing the new colour scheme drank in every ray of sunshine which was reflected in the warm-ochre bed-settee, pine table and chairs and the floating brick-red viole drapes at the French windows which led onto the minute balcony. It was radiant and cheerful and Robyn loved it; she loved the whole house, along with the work she did. Life was good.

      She nodded to the thought as she opened the front door and stepped inside out of the drizzle. Yes, life was good. The last three years had seen an increase in clients which had surprised and delighted her, mainly because she was passionate about her work and right from the beginning had had the courage to only get involved in products she truly believed in. Journalists were canny folk: they could always see straight through any dissimulation.

      Without pausing downstairs she climbed the stairs—again varnished and devoid of carpet—to the bathroom, where she began to run a bath before making herself a cup of hot chocolate in her bright streamlined kitchen. Once undressed and in her thick towelling robe she carried the hot chocolate through to the bathroom, setting it on the floor at the side of the bath before she sank into the silky bubbles.

      If only her bank manager had been more positive about the business loan she’d applied for… She drained the mug and leant her head back against the smooth surface of the big cast-iron bath the house had boasted when she’d bought it, and which she had had resurfaced in gleaming white. She desperately needed a second assistant; Cassie had been right this afternoon in that the workload was becoming too much. But only in that! All that talk about Clay Lincoln had been crazy.

      Her eyes closed as the caressing warmth of the hot water did its work on tired muscles, and before she could stop it, her mind had taken her back in time to Cassie’s wedding day. As bridesmaid, she’d been dressed in a gorgeous dress of pale jade silk, her curls threaded with tiny, fresh white orchids and her face alight with the wonder of being sixteen and desirable. Or at least she had imagined she was desirable.

      She shifted in the water, but it was too late. She was sixteen again: young, vulnerable and breathtakingly in love with life. With life and Clay Lincoln. He had been so handsome that her knees had turned to jelly every time she’d seen him and on this day, Cassie and Guy’s wedding day, he had looked like a Hollywood film star. Better than a Hollywood film star. The smart suit and silver-blue shirt and tie which had exactly matched the devastatingly cool eyes had held her transfixed.

      And he had noticed her. For the first time he had noticed her. She had seen something in his eyes when she had followed the bridal pair down the aisle, her arm in that of Guy’s married brother who had been the best man.