No More Lonely Nights

'I'm fine where I am. I've already had one hand-to-hand combat on that bench. I can do without a repeat performance.'

He laughed shortly. 'Don't worry, I'll keep my hands to myself, but I'm not sitting here while you stand, so please sit down!'

'Oh, well, if you say please,' Sian said, deliberately provocative, and took a seat at the far end of the bench.

He eyed her sideways. 'Are you always this irritating?'

'Always.'

'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.