No More Lonely Nights (21 page)

‘I feel quite sorry for myself,’ Cass murmured, and her colour rose again, but she kept her face averted, hoping he wouldn’t notice. ‘Can we get on with this, please?’

He sat sideways, facing her, his arm sliding along the bench, but his hand didn’t actually touch her, just lay nearby, his fingers tapping on the back of the ironwork.

‘When my mother died it left my father very lonely, but he wouldn’t marry again, partly for Magda’s sake, because she was very jealous and clinging even then, and he was afraid of what it might do to her if he remarried. After a while, though, he decided she needed female companionship, other girls to talk to, older women looking after her, so he sent her to a good girls’ school. She hated boarding, but Dad insisted, although he missed her and he was alone even more. While she was away at school, he visited Annette’s home several times a week, sometimes more often. He thought of Annette as another daughter, in some ways. He used to say to me that I must marry her when she grew up, so that she could really be his daughter.’

Sian looked incredulously at him. ‘You aren’t going to tell me you proposed to her simply to please your father?’

He laughed. ‘Nothing that simple, no, but in a way he planted the idea in my head years ago. Annette was just a little girl then. I didn’t take him seriously, and I don’t think he meant it seriously either. But when Dad died and Magda got married and Malcolm looked as if he might be going to get engaged too any day, I suddenly felt lonely, the way Dad had been when our mother died. There I was in that big house, and half the time I seemed to be alone. I was working very hard and I was often too tired to go out in the evenings. At weekends it wasn’t so bad, but even if I did go out with a girl after work I caught myself yawning, and they didn’t like that much.’

‘I’m sure!’ Sian said, laughing.

He watched her, his grey eyes gleaming softly. ‘I love it when you laugh like that; your whole face lights up.’

Sian stopped laughing and looked down, her throat dry. ‘Go on with your story.’

‘You wouldn’t put any of this in your paper, would you?’ he asked with a rueful note which meant that he didn’t really believe she would.

‘No,’ Sian said, and he smiled; she watched through her lowered lashes and ached with passion. It hurt to love this much; she wished she had never stopped that day to pick up the runaway bride, she should have driven on and ignored her. She wouldn’t now feel this need and pain if she had.

‘I’m not trying to say there weren’t girls, that’s the point,’ Cass said. ‘But none of them mattered, and gradually I got sick of the way I was living. I had brief relationships, the girls were nice and usually pretty, but somehow it wasn’t important whether I saw them again or not, and the house seemed empty at night. I would wake up sometimes and listen to the silence and feel so lonely. Then Annette started work with me, and she was such a link with my father, with life the way it had been before Dad died and the family started splitting up. At first I just felt comfortable with her. I took her out to dinner if she worked late with me—I’d never have asked any of my other secretaries out because I’d have been afraid they would get ideas and that would ruin our working relationship. But I didn’t feel I had to worry about Annette; she was like another sister. So I saw a lot of her and it was fun spoiling her, giving her presents, taking her to expensive places just to see her face. She was still half a child in some ways. I think I was copying my father, doing what he had done. I didn’t set out to; it was instinctive, I wasn’t really aware what I was doing.’

‘You were falling in love with her,’ Sian said huskily, swallowing on the jab of pain she felt.

‘No,’ he said, and she looked up then, eyes wide, angry.

‘Now who’s lying? Of course you must have been.’

He shook his head. ‘I never thought I was in love with her. I knew what I felt, what in a way I still feel—affection, nostalgia, a desire to look after someone rather helpless. She was still more of a sister than a lover, and when I knew her father had a bad heart I decided that marriage would be an answer for both of us. I wouldn’t come home to an empty, silent house every night after Malcolm married—and Annette wouldn’t be left alone in the world when her father died. I’d no idea, you see, that there was another man. She’d never breathed a word, to me or her father. I thought she was lonely, too. I had got to the age when you don’t believe you’ll ever feel anything world-shattering. I’d never met that one woman and I didn’t think I ever would. But I was very fond of Annette, and we had our lives in common; we’d always known each other on that casual, day-to-day basis, and it seemed to me that that was what marriage turned into once the honeymoon period was over. I thought Annette and I were at the stage most married couples reach after a while; we had merely skipped the first stage, and I didn’t think that mattered.’

Sian considered him with incredulity and laughter. ‘You’re crazy, do you know that?’

He slid along the seat and his hand touched her cheek. ‘I know that. I learnt it from you, even though you’re crazy too.’

She was so happy, she felt she was floating, and to tether herself down she caught hold of his hand and pulled it down from her face, held it tightly.

‘I must be crazy to listen to this.’

’
You’re
world-shattering!’ Cass said, so close now that his mouth was moving against her ear, his breathing warm on her skin.

‘Stop that. I don’t know if I want to get involved with a lunatic.’

‘A lover and a poet,’ he murmured, his voice husky with amusement and another, much deeper feeling. ‘I never thought I’d sink to the level of writing poetry, of course, but for you I might even do that.’

‘I’d insist on it,’ Sian said, putting a hand up to push away his head. It obstinately stayed where it was, his face buried in her throat, and she absently found herself stroking his thick, dark hair. ‘If I were stupid enough to consider getting involved with you, that is, which of course, I’m not.’

‘Aren’t you, darling?’ His mouth was hot and urgent on her neck; the words came out thickly, barely audible except to someone who was intensely concentrated on everything he did and said.

‘If you weren’t in love with Annette, why were you so violent when she ran away from you?’ she asked, having difficulty ignoring what he was doing, but determined to get the whole truth.

‘She left me standing at the altar. Of course I was furious. Who wouldn’t be? But I wasn’t maddened by love. I felt more like slapping her, to be frank, until her father had the heart attack, and after that I just wanted to find her and get her to the hospital in time.’ He gently bit her earlobe.

Sian curled the warm strands of hair around her fingers. ‘So it was just your ego that was hurt?’ She tried to yank his head back, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘What do you mean,
just
my ego? Why do you think the Japanese are so set on never losing face? Nobody likes looking a fool, and there’s no joke so funny as the bridegroom left standing at the altar, except, of course, the bride left standing there!’

‘That wouldn’t be funny!’ Sian thought aloud, grimacing.

‘There you are, then. Music-hall jokes to most people, but if it’s you in that situation the joke isn’t so funny, even if you aren’t actually in love.’ He put a hand under her chin and forced her head back so that she had to look up at him.

Green eyes wide and shimmering with a mixture of happiness and passion, Sian stared back as he searched her face with that intent gaze.

‘Sian?’ His voice was unsure, husky. ‘Will you listen now? I’m in love. How about you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she wailed, afraid to admit that what she felt was anything so serious.

Cass watched her lips; they trembled under his stare and he leaned over to kiss them, softly at first, coaxing a response, experimenting gently, and then with a rapidly mounting excitement and desire that swept them both away. He had both arms around her and pulled her on to his lap; she wound her arms around him and kissed him back urgently, no longer trying to hold back or disguise what she felt. There was a terrible sense of relief as she let go of her defences, giving in with hunger and yearning and a driving sense of need.

Cass groaned her name, his arms tightening around her. He was breathing thickly; she could hear his heart crashing inside his ribs with an almost frightening violence, and her own heart beat far too fast. Her blood was overheating until she was burning up, but they went on kissing, touching each other with hands that shook, both of them oblivious to everything around them.

It was the cry of a bird overhead that made them come out of it. Sian jumped, her eyes opening wide, drowning in passion. Cass looked down at her with a dazed expression, his face dark red and his eyes glittering.

She laid her head against him, breathing roughly. ‘I feel as if I’ve just run a marathon.’

He cradled her on his lap, in his arms, his head on her hair. ‘That’s odd. So do I. Maybe we did?’

She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘Where are we? I can’t remember.’

‘In the garden; hear the birds?’

‘That was it—a bird calling, that was what made me wake up.’

‘Were you asleep? I don’t like the sound of that. When I make love to you I want you wide awake.’ He kissed her hair and tried to move his lips down over her face, but she laughed and evaded him.

‘Be serious for a moment.’

‘I am serious, about you,’ he whispered and she believed him then, her heart hurting inside her. ‘I love you, Sian. How about you?’ he said again, as he had said before he’d kissed her, and this time she didn’t say she didn’t know, because she did and she was no longer afraid to admit it.

‘I love you,’ she said huskily and he sighed.

‘Darling.’ He held her in a happy silence, their bodies close and warm.

Sian listened to the other sounds rising above the quiet rhythms of the garden, above the call of birds, the rustle of leaves, the whisper of the grass. People were all over the place out there; she could hear some sort of brass band tuning up, hear someone testing a loudspeaker, hear voices urgently calling one to the other as the last arrangements for the garden party were put into effect.

‘We don’t have to go out there and get stared at, do we?’ She couldn’t bear the idea of strangers staring, listening to them talking to each other, guessing at how they felt. It was all so new to her even now; she felt like someone with a delicate globe of crystal in her hands which might smash if it wasn’t handled with care.

‘We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, darling,’ he said, stroking her sleek blonde hair with a tender hand.

‘Could we be naughty and escape before the party starts?’

‘What about your own dear colleagues? We’ll be disappointing them.’ He sounded amused and she laughed.

‘Won’t that be too bad!’

‘Your editor will want to tear you limb from limb. Not that I’d let him, of course.’ He laughed softly, his hand deftly travelling. ‘Such beautiful limbs; no one but me shall touch them.’

Sian looked through her lashes, mocking him. ‘It was you who invited the press here and who wanted to distract them from Annette—I don’t care what Leo says. He’ll get over it! By tomorrow he’ll be obsessed with another story. Nothing lasts in our world. Why do you think they call it the
news
! Because it has to be as hot as new bread, the very latest story. Yesterday’s news is history—and we don’t print history. Our readers want their gossip up to the minute.’ She half closed her eyes as his hand delicately touched her breast. ‘That’s nice, but not here or now. I don’t want to read about this in tomorrow’s paper, if you don’t mind.’

‘The biter bit,’ he drily commented, letting her sit up on the seat and smiling at her. ‘Now you know how all your own victims felt.’

‘I keep telling you, I’m not a gossip columnist. I’m strictly a news reporter, a very different animal. I cover facts, not bedroom whispers.’ She looked at her watch and frowned. ‘If we’re to get away before we’re trapped by the press, we’d better go soon. Look at the time!’

Cass pulled her to her feet. ‘My car is parked in the old stableyard at the side of the house, right away from the gardens where the party is being held. If we go through these trees we can run across to the yard in two minutes, and once we’re at my car we can get away easily enough.’

‘Another chase!’ Sian said ruefully, making a face. ‘Ever since the day I picked Annette up, I seem to have spent most of my time running away from someone or other. Well, one last time won’t kill me, I suppose.’

Cass had been smiling as she talked, but he suddenly sobered, staring at her in a frowning way. ‘Oh, God, yes,’ he said inexplicably. ‘Sian, how do you feel about weddings?’

Bewildered, she flushed. ‘Weddings?’

‘Do you want a white one with all the fuss and trimmings, I mean? Your family and friends, and mine, and a big reception—all that?’

‘Are you proposing?’ She was breathless again and laughing. ‘Cass, really! Aren’t you rushing things a bit? Give me time to…’

‘Don’t you see?’ he interrupted grimly. ‘I couldn’t go through all that again. I’d have nightmares about it happening again; being left at the altar, all the newspapers gleefully hashing up what happened this time, people laughing…’

‘Cass, I wouldn’t do that to you,’ she said gently, touching his face. ‘Stop thinking about it. We have all the time in the world to get to know one another. Don’t start fretting over something that won’t happen—and anyway, if you don’t want a white wedding we’ll elope. That would be more fun, anyway. We needn’t tell another soul, just go away and telegrams later.’ She laughed. ‘I’d like it best that way, wouldn’t you? No hassle, no problems, just us against the world.’

‘Yes,’ he said huskily, taking her hand and kissing the palm. ‘Just us against the world.’

‘If I decide to marry you,’ Sian reminded him. ‘I haven’t even started to think about it yet.’

‘Start now,’ he said, kissing the fast-beating blue vein at her wrist.

‘If we don’t go soon, we won’t get out of here alive,’ said Sian breathlessly, and Cass took her hand tightly in his, and they ran together through the trees, across some grass into the stableyard where his car was parked. As they drove out of the gates, Sian saw some old friends from Fleet Street strolling lazily into the garden party. One of them caught sight of her in the car and his head swung, his jaw dropped. He began to run back to his own car, but Cass put his foot down and they shot away too fast for pursuit. Sian laughed.