Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

neck, and the few extra centimetres in length had softened her face and complemented the unconscious serenity which motherhood had given her.

      She clambered into an outrageous lime-green leather mini-dress with zip-front and matching ankle boots, which had been given to her by one of Italy’s most famous and avant-garde designers after she had modelled it for him. It was a one-off, and he had told her rather sensationally that he would never be able to bear seeing it on another woman because the dress was simply her.

      Now, as Triss twirled in front of the mirror, she wasn’t too sure. Oh, it looked superb, no question about that—because you needed a tall, lean and leggy look to get away with this kind of abbreviated garment. A model-girl look, to be precise. She just wasn’t sure, she thought as she put on a pair of huge silver earrings studded with jade, whether the rather conservative St Fiacre’s restaurant was quite ready for this kind of thing!

      Cormack certainly wasn’t. He blinked several times in quick succession when he saw her, and seemed lost for words for a moment, until he growled, ‘Maybe we’ll cancel that table, after all—and eat in.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ answered Triss tranquilly. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

      ‘Hmm,’ was his only response.

      Lola and Geraint arrived, giggling happily and so openly in love that Triss could see that it was a real effort for them to keep their hands off each other.

      ‘Geraint has moved in with me until we decide whether or not we’re going to stay at St Fiacre’s!’ announced Lola.

      ‘Which is rather convenient,’ murmured Geraint, ‘seeing as Dominic wants his house back!’

      ‘So Dominic Dashwood is coming back for good, is he?’ asked Cormack thoughtfully. ‘Bang goes your peace and quiet then, Triss! The estate will be crawling with members of the Press.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ Triss disagreed, shaking her head. ‘Security on the estate is tight, tight, tight—that’s one of the main reasons I bought the house.’

      ‘Is it, now?’ queried Cormack, and threw Geraint a narrow-eyed look over the top of Triss’s head.

      Lola was bubbling over with excitement, and she kept waving her left hand around in a flamboyant arc, so that the whopping great solitaire on her finger cast rainbow rays in its path.

      ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous!’ murmured Triss fervently, trying like mad to keep the envy out of her voice. Was she really so old-fashioned, she wondered in disgust, that she wanted Cormack to buy her a similar declaration of intent?

      Yes, she did! And what on earth was the point of yearning for the unattainable?

      ‘Where’s Simon?’ asked Lola.

      ‘Asleep,’ answered Cormack. ‘I put him down about ten minutes ago.’

      Triss saw the assessing look which passed between Lola and Geraint as they jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion. They probably thought that she and Cormack were about to join them for a double wedding, she decided gloomily.

      ‘Oh, I do love Simon!’ sighed Lola. ‘How I’d love babies of our own! And soon, please, Geraint, darling? Lots and lots of them!’

      ‘I want you to myself for a while before we start having babies, Miss Hennessy!’ responded the devastating Welshman, with an almost imperceptible wink at Cormack.

      Triss and Cormack left the lovebirds behind. They were driving slowly towards the restaurant when Cormack noticed a man with a long-lens camera hiding not very inconspicuously beneath a tree.

      ‘Look.’ He pointed.

      ‘Paparazzi?’ queried Triss.

      ‘Looks like it.’

      ‘Wonder why? Is it you?’ she wondered aloud, but he shook his head.

      ‘I’m much too boring and low-profile for the tabloids,’ he smiled. ‘No, it’s Dominic. I hate to say I told you so.’

      ‘Well, he shouldn’t be so rich and so good-looking,’ observed Triss, and Cormack shot her an unfathomable look.

      ‘So he appeals to you, does he?’ he queried softly.

      ‘No.’

      Oddly, he did not pursue it. In fact, he waited until they were taken to a prime-position table in the restaurant which overlooked the lake before he spoke again.

      The other diners watched closely as they sat down, but neither Triss nor Cormack noticed. They were given menus, but the print was a blur to Triss, and she found herself looking rather helplessly across the table at Cormack.

      ‘Two Caesar salads to begin with,’ he told the waiter, interpreting her look correctly. ‘Then roast salmon with green beans. Half a bottle of Vouvray and some iced water, please.’

      He handed their menus back and the two of them sat in silence while the waiter adjusted their cutlery, poured their drinks, then left them.

      Triss felt nervous and scared, and then Cormack leaned across the table, picked up her hand from where it lay inertly on the table, and said softly, ‘I love you very much, Triss Alexander. So will you please marry me?’

       CHAPTER TWELVE

      TRISS stared at Cormack disbelievingly. ‘You don’t,’ she told him in a hollow whisper. ‘Please don’t say you do when you don’t.’

      He frowned. ‘Don’t what? Don’t want to marry you? Oh, I do, Triss. This is, after all, the second time of asking, remember?’

      ‘But you don’t love me!’ she hissed back angrily, uncaring that people were watching her. ‘You’re just saying that because you want Simon and you know that I come as part of the package! And you know that I wouldn’t dream of marrying you unless I knew that you loved me...’

      ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he asked interestedly.

      She eyed him suspiciously. ‘What?’

      ‘Marry me if I didn’t love you? Be honest now, Triss.’

      His blue eyes were piercingly direct, and Triss found that she could not look into them and tell a lie. And hadn’t she already decided that afternoon that she would marry him, if he still wanted her to?

      ‘Yes,’ she admitted in a low voice. ‘I think I would.’

      ‘And why would you do that?’ he coaxed softly.

      Should she risk her pride with an honest answer? Didn’t she owe him that much after everything she had done to him? ‘Because I have more than enough love to go round,’ she told him simply. ‘For both of us.’

      He started grinning. And grinning. And then he began to chuckle. In all the time she had known him, she had never seen Cormack laugh quite so uninhibitedly.

      ‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Triss indignantly.

      ‘Nothing. Everything. Oh, darling, you have just made every dream I ever had come true.’

      ‘Cormack—’

      But he shook his head. ‘Let me just say this, Triss. Let me get it off my chest. When our relationship soured before—’

      ‘It was through my jealousy,’ she put in firmly.

      ‘Well, yes—partly. But I couldn’t have made you feel very secure if you believed that I was capable of infidelity.’

      ‘I don’t think I actually believed that,’ she admitted. ‘I just didn’t want beautiful women fawning all over you whenever I wasn’t around. I wanted to be around you all the time, Cormack, and yet I thought that if I was, then you wouldn’t want me any more.’

      ‘But why?’ he queried, in a stunned voice. ‘Why