No More Lonely Nights

'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 pa

rked 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.'