No More Lonely Nights (11 page)

‘But I want some sort of story,’ he said, glowering from his chair. ‘Go and knock out a few columns of inside stuff right away.’

‘About what? There’s nothing to write about, and anyway, I promised…’

‘Aha!’ he triumphantly burst out. ‘You promised Cassidy what, exactly? Let me remind you, you work for us. Your first loyalty is to the paper.’ Then he paused for thought and cunningly added, ‘To your readers, I mean—you owe them the truth, they have a right to know—’

‘Know what?’ she crossly interrupted. ‘The story’s cold, Leo. Annette’s father had a heart attack, but he’s going to make it, and I did the story about Annette and her true love. We can’t re-hash yesterday’s news.’

‘Give us an inside story about how Cassidy’s taking it.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she lied, and from Leo’s cynical face she knew that she wasn’t very convincing.

‘He didn’t make a pass?’

‘I told you, no!’ Lying to Leo wasn’t really lying, because if he was told the truth he wouldn’t hesitate to use it against her as well as against Cass. In pure self-protection Sian lied, and inwardly had a qualm of sympathy for all the people who had lied to her in the past when she had been trying to dig out facts about them.

‘But he made you spend the night at his house!’

‘To chaperone Annette!’

Leo made a gruesome face. ‘Oh, well, describe the house, then, describe what happened, write anything, but give me a story, damn you!’

She escaped, having promised to do a colour piece on the Cassidy house and how Annette had taken her father’s heart attack. Cass wasn’t going to like it, but at least he wouldn’t be reading columns of overheated prose about this invented relationship between them, she thought. He would have to be thankful about that.

She had to put up with a lot of teasing from her colleagues, but as they all went off to do the stories Leo had sent them to cover Sian was left in peace to write her copy in the office. She was rather suspicious because Leo hadn’t detailed her to work on any outside stories, but for the rest of that day she was kept busy writing up agency stories Leo didn’t want to put in the paper the way they had come in, usually because they were too bald and Leo wanted them angled for the paper.

It wasn’t what Sian was accustomed to doing; it was a job for a sub-editor, in fact, but from the way Leo spoke she realised it was partly intended for a punishment. His other reason for keeping her hanging around the office was less obvious, but she guessed that, too.

Leo wanted her under his eye. He wanted to know if Cass contacted her, or she contacted Cass. Over the weekend, she had vanished and left him without a clue what she was up to, although other papers had reported her presence at the hospital, and with Cass, so Leo had known where she was but had been unable to get hold of her. He wasn’t going to let that happen again!

He was still suspicious of her; he knew she hadn’t told him the whole truth about her and Cass. He might even guess quite accurately what that truth might be, but he wasn’t finding out from her and he knew that, so he was going to keep her where he could watch her. Sian wasn’t getting out of his sight again.

Cass must have seen the papers, but he didn’t ring and he didn’t show up at the newspaper, so as the day wore on Sian became more relieved and Leo grew more morose and accusing.

In the end, he had to let her go home—he had no excuse for keeping her at the office after her shift was over, much as he would have liked to think of one.

She took the underground home. It was raining lightly when she emerged from the station, so she started to run, but hadn’t gone far before she noticed the limousine crawling beside her along the kerb. Sian looked casually in that direction at first, then did a double-take as she recognised it.

‘Can I give you a lift?’ Cass asked, leaning over to talk out of his lowered window.

‘You can get into trouble for that, you know!’ she said, turning towards the car and trying not to be too pleased to see him.

‘For what?’ he asked, pulling up to a standstill so that she could slip into the passenger seat.

‘Kerb-crawling. A policeman might think you were trying to pick up women.’

‘I was—in the singular,’ he said, and gave her a wicked, sidelong smile. ‘And
you
are very singular.’

She clicked home the seat-belt, feeling oddly at home in the luxurious interior now. ‘Dare I ask what you’re doing here?’

‘Waiting for you,’ he coolly admitted. ‘I thought you might like to hear the latest news of Annette’s father.’

‘How is he?’ she asked, sobering.

‘The hospital are being cautiously optimistic. They say he has a fighting chance.’

‘I’m glad.’ She threw him a swift glance, then looked away, her heart light. ‘How kind of you to go to so much trouble to let me know.’

‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,’ he said, his mouth twisting upwards, and she laughed. ‘I did have another motive for meeting you from work,’ Cass added.

‘What was that?’ she asked blandly.

‘I thought it would be nice to have dinner.’ He said it very casually, but both of them knew the invitation was far from casual, and Sian took a deep breath, knowing that this was some sort of turning point in her life, in both their lives. She had a dozen good reasons for turning him down, for politely making an excuse and saying goodnight. She knew that if she really wanted to she could end it now, make sure that he never came again. She firmly told herself that that was what she must do.

All she had to do was make him realise how utterly impossible it was for them to see each other again. Taking a deep breath, she asked huskily, ‘Did you see the morning papers?’

She expected his face to darken, expected him to start breathing fire and brimstone about the latest gossip, but instead he laughed. ‘I did. I must say, your colleagues have very active imaginations.’

Sian was incredulous. She looked at him, searching his face for clues to this extraordinary cheerfulness. It didn’t add up when she remembered his rage over the other newspaper stories in the last few days.

‘But if we have dinner, if we’re seen together again,’ she said slowly, ‘that will hit the gossip columns, too.’

‘I’m counting on it,’ he drawled, and that was when the truth dawned on her. It wasn’t Cass who was slow on the uptake—it was her. Of course he didn’t mind their names being coupled! He was delighted. If the gossip columnists thought he had a new romance, they would concentrate on that and stop harping on about Annette, about his humiliation in being jilted at the very altar. Cass was indifferent about the gossip over himself and Sian— it was mention of Annette that hurt him.

Sian’s teeth met. He was using her again, just as ruthlessly as when he had made love to her in her flat, and for exactly the same reason! His ego needed it.

‘It doesn’t bother you that I’m being gossiped about, too?’ she asked bitterly. ‘I suppose I’m expected to be flattered to have my name linked with yours?’

‘This is your profession,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s time you found out how it feels to be on the receiving end.’

She looked at him with dislike. ‘I don’t think I will have dinner, thank you. Will you drop me at my flat, please?’

‘No,’ he said, putting his foot down on the accelerator and shooting past her flat a moment later, in spite of her angry protests.

‘I won’t have dinner with you!’ she yelled above the roar of the engine. ‘Do you hear? I won’t get out of the car; I won’t have dinner.’

He didn’t answer, which made her fidget restlessly. ‘Did you hear me?’ she asked, and he gave her a silent grin which sent her into positive mania. ‘Stop this car, let me out. I’m not having dinner with you and I won’t be used in any of your little games.’

Cass laughed, which seemed the last straw. Sinking uselessly back in the seat, Sian gave up talking and concentrated on planning her escape. She would jump out the next time he stopped at a set of traffic lights, and run like hell; he could hardly abandon his car in the street, holding up the rest of the traffic, while he chased her, could he? Could he? She slid a look at him, not sure about that. He was capable of anything.

They were approaching traffic lights now; he was slowing, the lights were red. Sian tensed, ready to move, but with inward fury saw the lights turn amber, then green. Cass picked up speed again and, baffled, she relaxed her muscles.

‘What are you plotting, I wonder?’ he thought aloud, giving her a probing look before looking back at the road ahead. ‘Whatever it is, don’t bother, because you owe me for having printed that first story about the wedding. You got your friends excited in the first place, and I’m sorry if it isn’t convenient for you to read about yourself in the papers, but there’s a rather satisfying irony in it, and you’re going to have to put up with it for a little while.’

Sian didn’t answer. She sat waiting for the next traffic lights, her eyes leaping with rage.

Then Cass turned up a side street, round a corner and into a mews. The car braked, pulled up, stopped. Sian at once reached for the door, but Cass caught hold of her by the waist and pulled her back. She struggled and sprawled over him, flushed and furious.

‘Get your hands off me! I could kill you! Let go, damn you!’

He held her firmly, his hands sliding up her body until they stopped just below her breasts, and Sian was abruptly breathless, shaken. She looked backwards, her head tilted so that his face was inverted above her; oddly unfamiliar, disturbing. The silence between them had a new tension. She heard him breathing, heard herself breathing, her heart banging inside her ribcage.

Sian couldn’t have put it into words, she wasn’t even sure what it was she felt as the silence elongated and they stared at each other from that new angle, but she knew Cass felt it too, how could he avoid doing so when the very air was charged with electricity?

‘Have dinner with me, Sian,’ he said at last in a low, husky voice, and she slowly nodded.

She would have said anything to break up that conflict. It was unbearable. While he’d stared down at her she had felt naked, as if everything in her lay in her face for him to read—all her thoughts and emotions visible to him. She had been appalled and, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, she had fled into hiding.

Cass helped her sit up, reversed out of the quiet little cobbled mews, and drove on through the Westminster streets until he parked across the road from a fashionable French restaurant. It was the sort of place where you could guarantee being seen and noted; the media haunted it, watching out for celebrities, and would-be celebrities haunted it, hoping to be noticed.

‘I’m not really dressed for a place like that,’ Sian wailed, looking down at her simple black and white striped cotton dress.

‘Very chic, I’d say,’ Cass assured her, firmly walking her across the road.

‘Oh, would you?’ she muttered. ‘What do you know about clothes?’

‘I know what I like,’ he said with amusement. ‘And I like what you’re wearing.’

She ran a hand over her blonde hair. ‘I look a mess.’

‘Stop fishing for compliments!’

‘I was doing nothing of the kind!’ she protested, turning pink and giving him a furious look.

He paused on the doorstep of the restaurant and looked down at her. ‘You look lovely,’ he said softly, and Sian was dry-mouthed and silenced.

They sat in the shadowy little bar before they went into the restaurant itself; Cass ordered a Kir for her and a cocktail for himself. Sian was self-conscious, aware that already people were watching them. Press? Or just fellow-diners who recognised them from that morning’s papers? Either way, she hated being stared at, and got up.

‘I won’t be long, I’m going to the powder-room,’ she told Cass, as he rose too.

There wasn’t much she could do about her dress, but she washed her hot face and renewed her makeup, spent some time doing her blonde hair, sprayed perfume behind her ears and at her wrists, then stared accusingly at her reflection. Why was she here with Cass, in spite of all her brave resolutions about never seeing him again? She knew what he was up to; he had boldly admitted it. He was a user; he had used her shamelessly from the start, and he would go on doing it if she let him. Why was she being such a fool?

The image in the mirror had no answers; it stared back, green eyes far too big and far too bright, too excited for safety. She looked grimly at herself.

‘You make me sick, do you know that? You shouldn’t be let out on your own.’

The door opened, and another girl came in and looked at her in surprise, then amusement. She had clearly overheard Sian talking to herself.

‘It isn’t any good, you know!’ she said, laughing.

‘What isn’t?’ Sian asked, taken aback.

‘Telling yourself off. You never take any notice. Or at least, I don’t!’ She giggled and Sian smiled before going back to join Cass.

He was leaning back against the velvet-covered seat, his glass in one hand, his face reflective, but as she came towards him his eyes focused on her and roved from her smoothly brushed blonde hair down over her slim figure in the black and white striped dress to her long, shapely legs. It was an openly assessing stare, and Sian bristled under it.

She sat down and gave him a cold look. ‘Is our table ready yet?’ The sooner this meal was over and she got away, the better she would like it.

‘You haven’t finished your drink.’

She picked up the glass and drained the pink liquid. ‘I have now.’

Cass laughed and swallowed the last of his own drink before getting up. Their table was in an alcove fringed with drooping fern; a private little corner, except that to get to their tables other diners had to walk past them, and each time glanced curiously into the alcove. That apparently didn’t bother Cass; he wanted to be seen with her and blandly ignored the stares, but Sian fretted under them, resenting it every time.

The menu had been one long list of very rich food, so she had chosen the simplest things available—tomato salad followed by plainly cooked sole served with a tossed green salad. The tomatoes were thinly sliced, dressed in olive oil and basil; the flavour was delicious. While they ate, Cass talked casually about his work, his family, his home, and Sian listened without saying much.