Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

at least let me try to explain—’

      ‘Keep your explanations!’ he snapped. ‘Every damned one of them! Because every word you speak sickens me to my stomach. Just get your coat and your things together. We’re going.’

      ‘G-going where?’ she asked him in confusion.

      ‘To see him, of course!’ he retaliated, and he clenched his teeth together in a look which was almost feral. ‘I want to see my son!’

      Despair warred with futile hope in Triss’s heart when she heard the fiercely possessive note in his voice as he spoke about his son. Already!

      Blue fire burned from his eyes. ‘What have you called him?’

      ‘Simon.’

      There was a pause while he digested this. ‘Simon what?’

      Triss swallowed. ‘Simon Cormack Patrick,’ she got out through lips which felt as though they had been glued together.

      Cormack Patrick senior expelled a breath which sounded more like a hiss. ‘You bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You scheming, devious little bitch! What right did you have to give my child my name—’

      ‘He’s my child too!’

      ‘—and yet keep his very existence from me?’ He shook his head in dazed disbelief. ‘Why?’

      Triss had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling—with indignation as well as shock at the depth of his anger towards her. What right did he have to accuse her of being scheming and devious when she was fully aware of his underhand behaviour and his deceit?

      She opened her mouth to sling his insults back at him, but something stopped her. Now was not the time or the place to trade slurs. Let him feel outraged and hurt and isolated instead—for had he not been responsible for imposing that very state on her?

      She automatically raked her fingers back through her shorn hair, and she saw Cormack’s eyes briefly narrow in a look which was alarmingly close to pain. It was a gesture which harked back to the days when she had needed to push the thick dark red waves away from her face.

      Had it reminded him of other, happier times? Triss wondered. Or the exact opposite? ‘I don’t think that now is either the time or the place to discuss my reasons—’

      ‘For denying me my child?’ he flared, his face about as dark as the leather which clung to him.

      Triss swallowed down her fear and doubt. Cormack was wounded, yes, as she had intended to wound him, but why did her victory suddenly seem so hollow and empty? She had expected his anger—but she had anticipated nothing on this scale. Nor the genuine hurt and bewilderment which she suspected lay behind his angry words.

      She tried to harden her heart against him, but with very little success. ‘None of this is getting us anywhere,’ she said, in an odd, trembling sort of voice.

      ‘Too damn right it isn’t!’ he snapped dismissively, and as he looked at her the grim expression on his face filled Triss with a sinking feeling of dread.

      For there was nothing but an icy coldness there—a look as unlike Cormack as she had ever seen. It was, she realised, the death of all his feeling for her—other than scorn and dislike.

      And Triss knew that she had paid the highest price possible for exacting her revenge on Cormack. Because if ever she had harboured any secret hopes of getting him back she could see from his face that any such hopes were futile...

      The first part of the journey back to St Fiacre’s was conducted in a terse, bitter silence. They took Triss’s car but Cormack drove—her hands were shaking too much for her even to be able to consider driving.

      ‘But what about your motorbike?’ she had asked him back at the cottage. ‘We can’t just leave it here.’

      His mouth had curved into a disdainful smile. ‘I have no intention of just leaving it here. I’ll arrange to have it collected and delivered to your’ house.’

      ’M-my house?’ she stammered. ‘But why my house?’

      He threw her a disbelieving look. ‘Because that’s where I’m going to be staying for the foreseeable future,’ he ground out, and Triss stared at him with real alarm.

      Because reaction to their earlier passion was now beginning to set in. And Triss knew that the aching she felt deep inside her was much more than just a physical readjustment to making love after such a long time and having had a baby in the interim.

      For, no matter how loveless the union which had taken place on the bed before, Cormack was still the father of her child—still the man she had loved more than she could ever have imagined loving anyone. And she was not immune to him—indeed, she suspected that she never would be immune to him.

      So how the hell could he suggest staying in her house? And how on earth could she contemplate letting him do so?

      ‘You can’t do that!’ she protested.

      ‘No?’ He raised a dark, arrogant eyebrow. ‘Just watch me, Triss.’

      ‘It’s my house—’

      ‘Listen, sweetheart,’ he cut in brutally. ‘You can stand there and spout a list of objections as long as your arm, but believe me when I tell you that they will not make an iota of difference to my plans—’

      ‘What plans?’ she asked immediately, wondering why all this seemed to be going so horribly wrong.

      He shook his dark head. ‘I don’t intend to waste any more time in discussion now. Just lock up, then get in the car and we’ll talk there.’ He took her small overnight bag from her and began to trudge up the hard, wet sand towards where Triss had parked her navy BMW.

      Triss felt too emotionally overwhelmed to do anything other than automatically carry out his instructions, so she locked up the cottage and made her way towards the car, where Cormack was already settled in the driving seat, his dark profile stony and unforgiving.

      She waited until he had negotiated the car up the steep, narrow lanes and was at last heading out on the motorway towards London before she brought the subject up once more.

      ‘What plans,’ she asked, ‘were you referring to earlier?’

      There was a pause. ‘Plans to get to know my son, of course.’

      ‘Cormack, I really think—’

      ‘And the only way to do that is to live with him,’ he continued remorselessly.

      His words were like lethal little darts being fired into her skin—there was such unconcealed venom behind them. ‘Live with him?’ she questioned faintly, not quite believing what she’d heard, but the implacable expression in his blue eyes left her in no doubt.

      ‘Yes, live with him!’ he echoed passionately. ‘Because you’ve denied me five months of his life, damn you, Triss Alexander, and I don’t intend to let you deny me any more!’

      Triss closed her eyes and saw a vivid image of what living with a Cormack who despised her might be like, and she felt physically sick at the thought of it. ‘You can’t just barge into someone’s house uninvited—’

      ‘But you did invite me, didn’t you?’ he told her in that silky Irish way of his as he smoothly overtook a car which was hogging the middle lane. ‘If not to your house, then certainly back into your life. And there must have been a reason behind that invitation, mustn’t there, sweetheart?’

      His eyes glittered with undisguised hostility. ‘So what was it? Getting tired of the burden of motherhood? Wanting to spread your wings? Some man on the horizon who can’t tolerate the sound of a crying baby when he’s trying to make love to you?’

      ‘If you weren’t driving I would hit you for saying something as disgusting as that!’ she fired back at him, her heart thudding painfully in her chest.

      He