Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

with its stained-glass windows and its oak door, and its red-brick walls covered with newly budding wisteria.

      ‘Is Simon here?’ he demanded as the car drew to a halt by the front door.

      ‘He’s next door at Lola’s. I’ll let you in, shall I, and then go and fetch him?’

      ‘Oh, no,’ said Cormack grimly. ‘I’m fascinated to meet this “friend” of yours, whom you see fit to entrust with the care of our son. You must think very highly of her, if you grant her a privilege you’ve denied me.’

      ‘I don’t want you coming in there with me if you’re intending to make trouble,’ Triss warned.

      ‘I just want to see him, Triss.’ His searingly blue eyes blazed a question at her. ‘Surely even you can understand that?’

      His appeal came straight from the heart, and Triss felt utterly wretched at that moment. She nodded dumbly.

      ‘Then let’s go,’ he ordered quietly.

      They walked silently, side by side, but that was their only concession to togetherness. The tension and the animosity sizzled between them like sparks crackling from a bonfire. They passed through Triss’s informal gardens and into the rather more elaborate plantings of Lola Hennessy’s house next door.

      Cormack raised his eyebrows as he took in the imposing white building which made Triss’s house seem almost tiny in comparison. ‘This is some place,’ he commented drily. ‘Your friend Lola is clearly a successful woman. What does she do?’

      Lola was an air hostess who had inherited the house from a wealthy man almost forty years her senior. But if Triss told Cormack that he would start leaping to all sorts of unsavoury conclusions! And, quite honestly, Triss was finding the situation difficult and fraught enough; without fanning the flames of his contempt even further.

      Anyway, Lola was successful though not in the way that Cormack meant. She had a job she adored, a busy social life and the fulfilment of working with one of the country’s most popular charities. She also had an outrageously attractive Welshman named Geraint Howell-Williams hovering in the background, though Triss was aware that he had been giving Lola considerable problems.

      They reached the front door, which was flung open before either of them had a chance to knock. In the hall stood a young woman in her twenties wearing leggings and a loose denim shirt. Her gloriously curly dark brown hair was tied up with a red chiffon scarf, although wayward curls were escaping everywhere, and her bright blue eyes sparkled like gems in the sunshine.

      ‘Triss, hi!’ she exclaimed, with a huge smile. ‘I saw you coming down the path! We just weren’t expecting you back so soon!’ She looked from one to the other, the smile dying as she must have registered the decidedly frosty atmosphere between the two of them.

      ‘We—we wanted to get back,’ stuttered Triss awkwardly. ‘Is everything OK?’

      ‘Everything is fine—’

      ‘How’s Simon?’ asked Triss quickly.

      ‘Simon’s just wonderful,’ Lola reassured her firmly. ‘I can hardly bear to give him back to you. Come and see.’

      Triss forced herself to try and act normally, though she found herself stupidly wondering whether it was obvious that she and Cormack had spent the afternoon in bed together. She could feel the unusually high colour in her cheeks which would not seem to fade. “This is Cormack Casey,’ she said, rather hesitantly.

      Lola held her hand out immediately. ‘Hello, Cormack.’ She dimpled, as if it were every day that she met friends’ estranged lovers who happened to be world-famous scriptwriters! ‘I saw your last film three times! I loved it—especially the bit where she discovered that the letter had never been sent.’

      Triss watched the stiff set of Cormack’s shoulders relax. She knew that he had been suspicious, and prepared to dislike Lola—and perhaps that was understandable in the circumstances—but no one could help but warm to someone who was so friendly and unaffected. And who was clearly a fan!

      ‘Did you, now?’ he queried, though his smile looked forced. ‘I’m Simon’s father,’ he told her bluntly.

      Triss looked anxiously at Lola, who was already aware of this fact, but to her credit she merely nodded, as if people confided their paternity every day of the week, and said, ‘I see.’

      ‘How is he?’ asked Triss again. ‘How has he been?’

      ‘Wonderful! A textbook baby! But don’t just take my word for it—come and see for yourself! He’s been out for a walk,’ Lola informed them as they followed her across the magnificent entrance hall towards a set of carved-oak double doors. ‘Then he had a bottle. And my mother watched over him while he had his snooze.’ At Triss’s raised eyebrows she said quickly, ‘She’s upstairs at the moment, resting—I’ll tell you about it later. We were just thinking of giving Simon some tea. He’s in here...’

      She pushed the door open and Triss felt all Cormack’s tension return as he saw his baby being cradled in the arms of a tall man who was a total stranger to him.

      At the sound of the door being opened the man turned to face them, and Simon immediately let out a huge gurgle of joy when he saw Triss.

      ‘Oh, Geraint!’ laughed Lola, her voice sounding slightly dreamy. ‘He’s been sick all over your shoulder!’

      Stormy grey eyes glanced dismissively at some regurgitated milk which had splodged over the shoulder of a black cashmere sweater, then the man shrugged. ‘It’ll wash,’ he drawled, in a distinctively Welsh accent.

      Without another word he walked across the room, carrying a wriggling Simon who was holding his arms out and trying to launch himself out of Geraint’s grip. ‘Hi, Triss,’ he said gently. ‘Have your boy back.’ And he handed Simon over to Triss.

      The baby locked his chubby arms around Triss’s neck and immediately began to squirm happily against her.

      ‘Hello, darling,’ Triss. whispered softly, closing her eyes briefly as she rubbed her chin against the delicate silk of his black hair, unaware that Cormack was standing across the room from her, watching her and watching Simon, his blue eyes narrowed and assessing.

      An awkward silence fell, and Triss was wondering just what to do next when Geraint came to her aid by moving across the room to stand rather proprietorially beside her.

      He held his hand out towards Cormack. ‘Geraint Howell-Williams,’ he said.

      The two men eyed each other warily, like two prime predators sizing each other up, then shook hands—though Cormack continued to subject Geraint to a steady, curious stare. ‘Cormack Casey.’

      ‘I know who you are.’

      ‘Then you have the advantage over me,’ said Cormack, his normally lilting Irish accent sounding harsh and abrasive. ‘Because I don’t know you from Adam!’

      ‘I’m going to marry Lola,’ said Geraint, by way of an explanation, looking directly into Cormack’s eyes.

      ‘I don’t remember agreeing to announce it!’ protested Lola, though her smile was so wide it threatened to split her face in two.

      ‘Don’t you?’ queried Geraint in a teasing drawl. ‘Well, I do—but you clearly had other things on your mind, darling!’

      ‘Geraint!’. Lola blushed a deep scarlet, but the look which passed between the two of them was electric with warmth and love and an uninhibited sexual tension.

      And we used to be like that, thought Triss, an unbearable sadness sweeping over her as she remembered a time when she and Cormack had both been incandescent with love. When just a shared look across a crowded room had been enough to make every other person fade into insignificance.

      She had to get out of here before she did something unforgivable—like breaking down in tears in front of everyone. She hugged Simon