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It was much later when she remembered the call and lifted the receiver to find a message had been left for her. In fact, there were three messages, timed throughout the day, each more terse than the last. They were all from Drayton Carlisle, requesting that she call him on his mobile to discuss funeral arrangements.
He had obviously lost what little sympathy he’d had for her. Cass told herself she didn’t care. She didn’t need his concern. He had never understood her or her relationship with Pen. He knew nothing of the past which had linked them inextricably before driving them apart.
Sometimes secrets did that to families. Pen had wanted to take hers and parcel it up tight and bury it so deep no one would ever discover it. The trouble was Cass. Cass knew the secret, had lived with it, helped her over it. Cass would have kept it, too, but Pen had never been sure of that. Pen hadn’t been able to keep other people’s secrets. She’d assumed Cass was the same and lived in fear of the day Cass would tell. So Pen had kept her at a distance, away from the Carlisle family and her new life.
Cass had accepted this, because she felt partly responsible for the past. If she’d controlled Pen better, she wouldn’t have been pregnant at sixteen, five months gone before realising, sobbing her heart out and suddenly a little girl again. Cass had concealed her own horror and offered comfort rather than recrimination until Pen had become resigned, then excited about the life moving inside her. She’d talked endlessly of possible names and impossibly expensive baby clothes.
It was not to be, however. The baby had made a sudden entrance to the world in a bedroom upstairs. He had struggled and gasped for life. Cass had tried and failed to breathe life into his small perfect body. Pen had been left empty-armed and devastated.
Cass, questioning her very vocation, had abandoned her studies to concentrate on getting Pen through the dark times. For a while it had seemed her sister would stay broken, defeated, unable to get over the pain of it, but in time she had emerged from the whole affair with a new, tougher edge.
Pen had decided she wanted to be a model. Cass had quelled any doubts and happily paid for a portfolio of photographs—anything rather than have Pen aimlessly sitting around. She’d sold her textbooks and stethoscope, believing she’d never go back to medicine. It had been money well spent when Pen had come home in seventh heaven at having been accepted on the books of a modelling agency.
But dreams of being a supermodel hadn’t quite become reality. Pen hadn’t been tall enough for catwalk and had been too slim for glamour. She’d managed to win a few catalogue assignments, mostly for the teen market, and when they’d dried up she’d settled for PR work at trade shows.
It had been through promotional work she’d met the Carlisles and, almost from day one, what had once been a joke—marrying money—had turned into a mission statement. Initially the talk had been of a Drayton Carlisle until Pen had decided he was too ancient and had subsequently transferred her affections to his younger brother, Tom.
Cass should have been appalled and had been really, but it had kept Pen happy. She hadn’t anticipated Pen being successful. Pen had still been only seventeen and, though scarred by experience, had been surely transparent to any man with insight.
She hadn’t reckoned on Thomson Carlisle. Some years older than Pen, but oddly immature. A privileged childhood fractured by the loss of his parents. Sweet, if a little weak-natured.
Had Pen loved Tom Carlisle? Cass had never been certain. Pen had appeared in triumph, waving a diamond engagement ring. At that point Tom had been an unknown quantity, and Pen had been infuriatingly vague. He’d been around twenty-two or -three or -four, had had a flat somewhere in South Ken and had been something in the family engineering business. She’d been more specific about the sporty Merc he’d driven and his two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year trust fund.
In fact, Cass hadn’t met Tom first, but Drayton Carlisle. He had appeared on the doorstep one evening, this tall, immaculately dressed, studiously polite, breathtakingly handsome creature from another planet. Cass had felt this curious twisting sensation in her stomach, seconds before her normal barriers had gone up.
She’d already been in a bad mood; his uninvited presence had put her in worse. She’d spent the day cleaning the house and worrying about Pen who had been out all night, and in ten minutes she’d been due to start an evening shift as a checkout girl at the local supermarket where she’d been working since abandoning her studies.
‘Yes?’ she’d fairly barked the word at this stranger.
He returned politely. ‘I’m not sure if I have the right address. I’m looking for a family called Barker.’
‘Yes,’ Cass repeated, without committing herself.
‘Are you Penelope’s sister?’ he added after studying her face.
He sounded mildly surprised. He’d possibly expected a petite, short-skirted blonde like Pen, and ended up with a tall, nylon-overalled mouse.
‘You’re Tom?’ Cass was surprised, too. This man looked far too mature for Pen.
He shook his head. ‘I’d better introduce myself. I’m Drayton Carlisle, Tom’s brother. And you are…’
Confused, that was what she was. She had yet to meet Tom and here was his big brother on the doorstep. She smelled a rat.
‘Cass,’ she replied abruptly.
‘Cass?’ He checked he had it right, ‘That’ll be short for…?’
Cass thought it fairly obvious and said with irony, ‘Castleford.’
‘Castleford?’ he repeated quizzically.
‘Town up t’North,’ she relayed, exaggerating her Yorkshire vowels.
His eyes narrowed briefly. Did he realise she was winding him up?
‘How unusual,’ he commented dryly.
‘And Drayton isn’t?’ she couldn’t resist countering.
‘Family name,’ he grimaced. ‘My mother was a Drayton.’
‘Really.’ Cass pretended to be impressed. ‘One of the Draytons?’
Of course, she’d gone too far. She’d put him down as an upper-class twit. She was right on one count but not the other.
He stared straight at her for a moment. It was an intense scrutiny. His eyes were ice-blue and hard and intelligent.
‘More Northern humour, I presume,’ he finally concluded before directing at her, ‘Is Penelope in?’
‘No, sorry.’ She shrugged into the jacket already in her hand. ‘Is there a message I can pass on?’
‘Are you expecting her back soon?’ he persisted.
How to answer that? Pen came and Pen went. Cass had long since lost any control over her movements.
Cass confined herself to a shrug.
‘In that case, perhaps you and I could have a talk about matters?’ he suggested, a hint of steel now behind the polite, well-modulated tones.
Matters being his brother marrying a nobody that he’d known five minutes. Even Cass could see the family would be less than thrilled.
‘Look—’ she glanced at her watch ‘—I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Carlisle, but can we make it some other time? I have to be in work in fifteen minutes.’
‘Is your work close?’ he asked as she shut and locked the door behind her.
‘A mile or so.’ She was going to have to run.
He must have read her mind as he said, ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
Cass was briefly tempted, before replying, ‘It’s all right. I can be a little late and I don’t want to put you to any bother—’
‘It’s no bother.’ He followed her out on the pavement, and directed a remote unlocking device to the row of cars ahead.
She saw a set of tail-lights briefly illuminate but it wasn’t until they were level that she read the logo and had a good look at the sleek sports car.
She kept her face impassive. Pen might be impressed by fast cars but she refused to be.
He opened the passenger door for her, and waited as she debated whether to accept this lift or not. He looked safe. Well, safe as in unlikely to turn out to be a psychopath or safe as even less likely to be interested in girls dressed in supermarket overalls.
She climbed in and found herself sinking into opulent leather. How the other half lived.
She gave him directions and, though it wasn’t far, they were caught in the rush hour.
‘I wondered—how do you feel about their relationship?’ he asked as they inched along the High Street.
‘I really can’t say.’ Cass knew Pen would never forgive her if she did. ‘I haven’t met your brother.’
‘Then you must have some doubts,’ he was quick to conclude. ‘Your sister’s only…what, seventeen? Rather young to be rushing into marriage, don’t you think?’
Quite, Cass could have agreed, but she wasn’t willing to give him the satisfaction—especially when she remembered Tom wasn’t the only Carlisle Pen had gone out with.
‘Not too young to be dated by men in their thirties, though,’ she said pointedly.
His eyes narrowed briefly from the road to her. ‘You mean me?’
‘Who else?’
‘That was once only.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ Cass returned with heavy irony.
‘No, it isn’t—’ he sounded annoyed ‘—and I didn’t date her. The company had an exhibition stand at Earls Court. I took those involved to dinner on the final day and somehow ended up with your sister. When I discovered how young she was—not to mention immature—I sent her home in a taxi, unsullied.’
Cass swivelled her head in his direction and saw from his tight-lipped expression he was being totally serious.
She felt an odd rush of relief, although she was not quite sure why. If Pen hadn’t slept with this man, there were others.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she finally said.
‘Do,’ he said with insistence, before shifting back to his original argument. ‘At any rate, I’d say she’s too young for commitment.’
‘Really,’ she replied archly. ‘How kind of you to be concerned for her.’
His eyes went from the road to Cass, checking if she were that naive. The curve of her lips told him otherwise.
‘Yes, all right, it’s obviously my brother’s interests I’m protecting,’ he admitted.
‘Or even his trust fund,’ she suggested somewhat recklessly.
He was quick to observe, ‘You know about his fund, do you?’
Cass could have kicked herself. She’d never met his brother yet she knew his financial situation!
She shrugged as if it had been just a guess. ‘All you rich types have trust funds, don’t you? Turn left here, by the way,’ she added, relieved to see they’d arrived.
He drove into the supermarket car park and Cass jumped out the moment he drew into a bay, muttering an offhand, ‘Thanks,’ as she went.
He wasn’t so easily dismissed, however. A detaining hand was laid on her arm before she reached the outer door.
‘I’m late,’ she protested.
‘Tough.’ Unmoved, he resumed their conversation. ‘So, having a trust fund, that makes Tom fair game, does it?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Cass tried and failed to shrug off his hand.
He tightened his grip. ‘But you think it.’
Cass’s temper rose along with his. ‘Pardon me, but have we met before?’
He frowned at this non sequitur. ‘Not that I can remember.’
‘No,’ she said archly, ‘so what makes you an expert on how I think?’
It stopped him in his tracks for a moment and a cloud gathered over his high, handsome brow. Cass waited for it to descend on her but, though their eyes met and clashed, he surprised her with his reaction.
‘You’re right. I was being presumptuous,’ he finally responded. ‘Perhaps you could clue me into how you really feel?’
Cass didn’t see that she could, and be loyal to her sister, so she dodged the question and said instead, ‘I don’t know how old your brother is—’
‘Twenty-five—’ was supplied.
‘But I imagine, like my sister, he’ll do what he wants, regardless,’ she ran on.
‘Not necessarily,’ he countered. ‘Not if he considers who controls his trust fund.’
His tone was understated, but his meaning was obvious.
‘You,’ she concluded.
‘Me.’ He nodded.
The fact wasn’t of much importance to Cass but she wondered if her sister knew it.
‘Possibly Tom has been reticent on the subject,’ Drayton Carlisle continued smoothly, ‘but I feel one should be straight about these things.’
He smiled as if they might have reached some understanding but the smile never reached those chilly blue eyes.
Cass checked she really had understood. ‘Let’s see if I have this right. You want me to toddle off home tonight and tell Pen who’s holding the purse-strings, while you sit back and hope she transfers her affections elsewhere. Is that straight enough for you?’
She raised challenging green eyes to his, but this time he surprised her with a dry laugh.
‘Frighteningly accurate,’ he conceded with the slight inclination of his head, before drawling on, ‘I wonder if the expression too clever for your own good has ever been run past you.’
‘Once or twice,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t let it bother me…insecure men have never been my thing.’
He laughed again, any insult bouncing off him. It was hardly surprising. This handsome, he’d probably never had a moment’s self-doubt.
She was aware of his eyes doing a quick inventory, looking beyond her scraped-back hair and the shapeless nylon uniform she wore.
