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‘So, what kind are?’ he asked, and this time his interest was personal.
‘Why?’ Cass didn’t want to play these games.
‘No reason.’ He shrugged. ‘I just wondered if there’s a man in your life.’
‘Several,’ she claimed rather than tell the sad truth. ‘They’re queuing up, in fact.’
He followed her glance towards the crowded checkout tills inside and laughed in reply. ‘I’d better let you go, then. When are you finished?’
‘Eight… Why?’
‘I thought I’d take you for a drink.’
He smiled. It was slow and amused. Cass wondered how many women had fallen for just that smile.
For a mad moment she was tempted. Perhaps it would be fun, cutting him down to size.
Then she remembered. ‘I can’t.’
‘Or won’t?’ he drawled back.
It really was ‘can’t’. After the supermarket Cass went on to a night shift at the Happy Hamburger.
But Cass was unwilling to explain herself and shrugged instead. ‘Whichever.’
He seemed unmoved, muttering, ‘Another time.’
Just words, Cass assumed, until their eyes met, trading silent messages, and she realised he meant it. There would be another time. He would make sure of that.
For a moment the promise—or threat—held her there, fascinated when she should have been repelled, then he was gone and only the scent of male power remained.
Too late for a clever put-down, even if she could have thought of one. She consoled herself with the thought that their paths were unlikely to cross again.
Of course she relayed their conversation to Pen, only Pen didn’t listen. Or didn’t appear to. Instead she looked like the cat that’d licked the cream and boasted that she could handle Dray. Although Cass repeated content and underlying meaning, Pen’s confidence remained. In fact, with breathtaking ego, she suggested that Drayton Carlisle’s objections were rooted in jealousy because he’d dated her first and was still interested.
Pen clearly believed this, and, worse, seemed excited by the prospect. Cass tried to talk sense to her, to say without actually saying it that a man like Drayton Carlisle—smart, mature, attractive—might want slightly more from a female companion than teenage youth. Pen, in turn, accused her of jealousy, too, of being piqued because he would never look at her.
Normally Cass quit arguments with Pen when they descended onto such a petty level but this time she fought back and admitted that Drayton Carlisle had done more than look—he’d asked her out.
It stopped Pen in her tracks and she just stared at Cass for a long moment, as if she were a stranger, before giving a caustic laugh and claiming Drayton Carlisle had been amusing himself.
Cass, who’d already worked out that possibility, didn’t feel like thanking Pen for underlining it, and, for once, was the one to walk out in temper.
Pen realised she’d gone too far and later issued quite a sweet apology. She hadn’t meant the comment personally. It was just that Drayton Carlisle had a bad reputation where women were concerned and she’d hate for Cass to be one of his victims. She sounded so sincere that Cass accepted this explanation and they made up.
They’d never really fallen out again but she’d still pretty much lost her sister from the day three years ago when she’d married Tom Carlisle. Sometimes they’d met up in London after Pen had spent the day shopping (it seemed that Tom’s allowance had not been stopped) and Cass had tried to make the right noises when Pen had shown her the latest bag or must-have shoes. It had been hard, however, as designer labels had been of minimal interest to Cass while the accompanying price tags could have brought tears to the eyes.
Cass had returned to her studies, by then, and had a mounting overdraft despite moonlighting at a pizza parlour. Of course she could have asked Pen for money. Once or twice Pen had offered. The trouble was Cass had never seen it as Pen’s money. It would always be Carlisle money and the idea of Drayton Carlisle discovering she’d accepted a handout had kept her from doing so. Not that Pen had ever mentioned her brother-in-law. She’d known it had been a taboo subject with Cass since the time…
Cass didn’t complete the thought but was dragged back into the present by the insistent ringing of the telephone. She guessed who it would be before she picked up the receiver but she was ready for him now. There was nothing like a trawl through the past to harden the heart and stiffen the spine.
‘It’s Drayton,’ he announced briefly.
She was even briefer. ‘Yes.’
‘The funeral has been rearranged for Thursday,’ he relayed. ‘Tom confirmed your sister’s preference for cremation.’
‘Right.’ Cass remained noncommittal.
‘You will go?’ he added in equally restrained tones.
If he’d issued a command, she might still have refused, but guilt and duty had been working on her since last night.
‘Yes, I’ll go,’ she agreed simply.
‘Good.’ He sounded satisfied.
‘How’s Tom?’ she asked, genuinely concerned.
He hesitated, then admitted, ‘Distraught.’
It was more honest than he’d been last night. She wanted to ask more, to ask about the baby, but wouldn’t let herself.
‘In fact, Tom’s very anxious to see you,’ Dray Carlisle continued in the same vein. ‘If you could stay after the funeral, I’d…I’d be grateful.’
Cass frowned down the phone line. Polite on the surface, it was clearly forced. For Tom’s sake. But why?
‘I’m sorry. I’m on duty in the evening.’ It was the truth.
‘I see,’ he accepted it, as he revealed, ‘Tom tells me you now work in a hospital as an orderly.’
An orderly? Six years’ slog and study dismissed in one word. Thank you, Pen. Why hadn’t she told them?
‘Something like that,’ she replied because it was easier than explanations.
‘Which hospital?’
‘Why?’
Cass wondered whether he doubted that she worked in a hospital at all.
‘I thought I could drive you back down after the funeral,’ he explained, ‘if you were prepared to stay and talk with Tom for a while.’
Cass frowned once more. Not at what he was saying, but what he wasn’t. If Tom wanted to talk, why hadn’t he called himself? And why had Big Brother volunteered, when it was obviously choking him to be conciliatory?
‘I don’t know.’ She had very unsettling memories of North Dean Hall, country seat of the Carlisles. ‘I can’t be late.’
‘On the day of your only sister’s funeral,’ he clipped back, ‘I don’t think anybody will be too critical of your timekeeping, do you?’
That was if she told them, which she hadn’t and didn’t plan to. Bad enough that this man thought she was unnatural. She couldn’t and wouldn’t expose her grief to the rest of the world.
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong.’ She thought of Hunter-Davies, the consultant for whom she currently slaved. He wouldn’t listen to excuses, tolerate mistakes or accept anything less than total commitment. ‘My boss wouldn’t care where I’d been, and, as I’m coming to the end of my contract, I need a decent reference.’
‘Contract?’ he echoed with renewed suspicion. ‘What exactly is it you do?’
It was too direct a question to duck, and, anyway, wasn’t there a chance he’d discovered the truth?
‘I’m a doctor.’ There was an element of pride in her voice.
She expected him to be at least mildly impressed. After all, he’d pretty much written her off as a no-hoper.
But he merely responded, ‘Okay, so don’t tell me,’ assuming she was being sarcastic.
Damn him. Was it so unlikely?
‘I’ll make sure you’re back on time,’ he went on. ‘In fact, I can send a car to collect you in the morning.’
‘There’s no need,’ she told him coldly. ‘I’ve said I’ll come.’
‘I wasn’t doubting it,’ he replied heavily. ‘I was trying to be helpful, save you relying on the vagaries of public transport.’
It was possible, Cass supposed, but then she remembered the last time she’d let him help her. There was always a motive behind Dray Carlisle’s apparent kindness.
‘Thanks all the same,’ she muttered back, ‘but I think I can cope with the train. I do, most days. In fact, it may come as a surprise to you, but a large section of the population rely on public transport.’
‘Really!’ he feigned surprise, then exclaimed dryly, ‘Goodness, how the other half live!’
He wasn’t serious, of course. He was just trying to wrong-foot her, borrow her lines before she could use them.
‘Well, far be it from me to relieve you of your hair shirt,’ he added in his deep drawl. ‘Would collecting you from the train be permitted?’
Oddly Cass didn’t mind his sarcasm. At least it was honest.
‘Strain getting too much for you, Dray?’
‘The strain?’
‘Of being pleasant to me.’
A moment’s disconcerted silence followed, and then he actually laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, it was. I see you still prefer plain talking, Cassie.’
Cassie. The name struck chords. Perhaps conjured up by her slip, calling him Dray. A reminder that for a brief moment in time they’d been close.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ she threw back.
‘Nothing at all,’ he conceded, before dropping his voice to a lower, more insidious tone. ‘In fact, why don’t we go the whole distance, Cassie, and stop pretending we’re strangers?’
Just words but they had their effect. Twenty-six years old and blushing like a schoolgirl. God, she was pathetic!
She took a deep, steadying breath and reminded herself he couldn’t see her blushes. He could only hear her voice, cold as ice as she responded, ‘Who’s pretending? You don’t imagine my sleeping with you makes you any less a stranger.’
There, she’d said it. It was out in the open. He had no power over her now.
A silence followed, as if she’d shocked him, but he came right back at her with, ‘Don’t worry, you and your sister shattered any illusions I might have had in that direction.’
The illusions had been hers as Cass remembered. She’d been a fool and Pen had wised her up.
‘Still, I suppose I should be flattered you even recall our tryst—’ he used the word in a purely mocking vein ‘—considering the many that have undoubtedly followed.’
Many? Cass could have challenged with ample justification. There’d been only one. A student doctor and he’d been another unmitigated disaster. But did she want him knowing just how limited her private life was?
‘I keep a record,’ she claimed instead. ‘You’re under D…for Disappointing.’
It was a put-down, so why did he laugh?
‘Are you sure it wasn’t D for Devastating?’ he suggested with his usual drawling arrogance, then cut the ground from beneath her by murmuring, ‘That’s what I have you under.’
Cass’s face flamed once more, as a shutter flickered briefly open on a picture of two bodies intimately entwined, and she wondered why she’d ever started this game of truth.
She stopped it abruptly by saying, ‘Well, now we’ve completed that trip down memory lane, do you think we could get back to the matter in hand? Burying my sister, that is,’ she added for both their benefits.
‘Of course.’ He didn’t argue with the change of subjects. Perhaps he regretted the deviation, too. ‘Phone me later with the train times and I’ll send a car to the station… I’m ordering the wreaths tomorrow. I can arrange one from you, if you wish.’
‘No, I’ll do that.’ She didn’t want any favours from him.
‘All right… Is there any song you wish to suggest for the service?’ he added with surprising generosity.
Cass knew her sister’s favourites but none was appropriate for the solemnity of the occasion and she said, ‘Not really. None you could play at a funeral.’
‘Right, I’ll just pick a couple of traditional hymns,’ he concluded.
Dirges would have been Pen’s comment and Cass was prompted to say, ‘Why don’t you ask Tom if he can think of anything she’d have liked?’
There was some hesitation before he answered obliquely, ‘Tom’s attention is focused on the baby at the moment.’
The baby. Her niece. Cass could have asked how she was. It would have been the natural thing to do. But any details and the baby would begin to be real for her.
He was clearly waiting for her to ask. When she didn’t, he volunteered. ‘She’s out of the incubator and doing well.’
‘Good.’ Cass sounded detached, and was determined to remain so.
He asked outright, ‘Would you wish to visit her while you’re up?’
‘There won’t be time,’ she replied, avoiding point-blank refusal.
But he heard it in her tone, anyway, and remarked, ‘I’d forgotten. Pen said babies weren’t your thing.’
Cass frowned. Why had Pen said that? It wasn’t true at all.
