Every single brain cell was telling her to say no. It was the sensible, the safe thing to do. She had been this way once before with William and it had ended in disaster. This would too. She knew it at heart. Nick would grow bored with her; it was inevitable with a man like him. No was the only answer to give.
But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell him to walk away from her. Not yet.
Cory was unaware of the play of emotions across her face, but when he pulled her to him she realised he’d guessed something of what she was feeling. ‘So, do we start doing the dreaded ‘‘d’’ word?’ he asked drily.
She looked into the blue eyes. From somewhere she found the strength to be as cool and laid-back as him. ‘I guess we’d better give it a shot for a while,’ she said airily. ‘If only to stop you growing stale.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘OH, DARLING, that’s absolutely wonderful. I’m so pleased. Haven’t I said you need another boyfriend, if only to spite William?’
Cory smiled at her aunt. For someone who had lived most of her adult life in the crazy and often promiscuous world of fashion, Joan could be terribly ingenuous. ‘For one thing, Nick’s not my boyfriend,’ she said gently, not wanting to disappoint the older woman. ‘We’re just going to date sometimes, that’s all. And, considering I haven’t seen William for three years, I doubt very much if anything I do would affect him in the slightest. He didn’t care when we were together as he proved only too well. He’d hardly take any interest now.’
‘What do you mean, he’s not your boyfriend?’ said Joan, ignoring the rest. ‘You said Nick wants to see you. It’s not one
of these modern open sort of things, is it? Where he can do what he likes and so can you?’
‘Not exactly.’ To be truthful, she wasn’t sure what it was, but she couldn’t very well say that.
‘I’d like to meet him,’ stated Joan definitely.
Cory’s nerves jangled. Joan had only met William once and it had been such an unmitigated disaster that they hadn’t repeated it. ‘I’ve only seen him twice myself,’ she objected. ‘I can hardly ask him round for an inspection by you.’
‘Not an inspection.’ Joan fixed her with a look that said she wasn’t about to be deflected. ‘Just to dinner.’
‘Not yet,’ Cory said firmly. Maybe not at all. She was due to go out to the theatre with him in the middle of the week and she was preparing herself already for the possibility that things might have changed between them. The weekend they had just shared had been…good—she wouldn’t allow herself a more enthusiastic summing up—but they might meet again and there would be nothing there. For him at least. And that would be fine, it would. She was expecting nothing from this relationship that wasn’t really a relationship at all. She was ordinary, for crying out loud.
She had spent most of the day in the house of a family who hadn’t a clue about personal hygiene or the most elementary social graces, trying to ascertain if the children were neglected out of intent or simply because their young parents didn’t have a clue.
She had returned home exhausted and stinking of the smell peculiar to the Massey family—a mixture of cat’s urine, dirt, cooking smells and body odour—which permeated every nook and cranny and ingrained itself into clothes, hair and nails. After washing her hair and having a long, hot bath she had gone round to her aunt’s house for dinner as she did every Monday, only to find that the odour seemed to have lodged itself somewhere between the end of her nose and her brain.
She could just imagine Nick’s reaction if he had seen her earlier. She almost laughed to herself. Nick, with his incredible flat, cars, designer clothes and immaculate appearance. No, they were miles, tens of thousands of miles apart. It was never going to come to anything. He was like a bright shooting star and she was like a damp squib.
‘Not yet?’ Joan was the original British bulldog when she wanted to be. ‘When then? Now your parents are gone I feel responsible for you.’
Now Cory did laugh out loud. ‘You know as well as I do that Mum and Dad barely knew I was alive,’ she said, just the merest trace of bitterness showing through. ‘And they would never have claimed to be responsible for me.’
‘Their loss.’ Joan sighed, looking into the lovely young face opposite her and wondering how two intelligent people like Cory’s parents could have been so criminally blind to their own daughter’s needs. ‘But I do worry about you. I can’t help it. And I know you are a perfectly modern woman who is in control of her life and her destiny, but still…’
Cory wasn’t at all sure about the control bit. ‘Maybe in a couple of months,’ she said placatingly. If they were still seeing each other then. Which she doubted. The tug at her heartstrings which followed was worrying.
‘I shall keep you to that,’ Joan said with great satisfaction. ‘Now, have a piece of the shortbread I made this afternoon with your coffee. I’m really getting the hang of this cooking lark, aren’t I, Rufus,’ she added to the dog sitting drooling at her feet. ‘After all those years at work when I ate out or had a ready meal in front of the TV, I’ve found it’s very satisfying to start a meal from scratch with fresh ingredients.’
‘You and Nick are going to have a lot to talk about,’ said Cory wryly.
They did. Two months later—months in which she and Nick had seen each other almost every night—Cory found herself watching him charm his way into her aunt’s affections. He had arrived at the house with a vast collection of herbs, all in little plant pots—‘thought it’d go down better than a bunch of flowers’, he’d murmured to Cory, who’d arrived early to help her aunt with the dinner—and an enormous hide bone for Rufus. The dog had promptly claimed Nick as his own personal companion, sitting on his foot all through dinner and then plonking himself down at the side of Nick’s armchair when they’d retired to Joan’s conservatory overlooking her pretty little garden.
The doors had been open to the warm August evening and in the distance somebody had been cutting their lawn, the drone of the lawnmower soothing. When Nick and her aunt had begun an in-depth conversation concerning the merits of certain herbs in certain dishes and other gastronomic delights, Cory had found herself beginning to doze. She’d had a hard week with a particularly harrowing case, and now the big meal, comfortable chair, mellow evening sunshine and general sense of well-being was seductive.
She was woken by a lingering kiss on her lips. She opened her eyes to find her aunt was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where’s she gone?’ she asked Nick drowsily.
‘Your aunt? Taken Rufus for a quick walk in the park. Apparently they have a little routine at nights now her leg’s better. Rufus has a chance to meet Oscar—an Old English Sheepdog,’ Nick explained knowledgeably, ‘and Periwinkle—a German Shepherd. According to your aunt, they are the canine version of the Three Musketeers and Rufus is bereft if they don’t meet up.’ His expression changed. ‘Were you bored earlier?’ he asked softly.
‘Bored?’ She gazed into the hard handsome face and wondered if he was aware of how devastatingly gorgeous he was. ‘How could anyone be bored listening to the merits of basil and thyme, or curd cheese over butter icing?’
He was used to her chaffing him. She had decided in the very early days that the only way she was going to hold her own in this relationship was not to fall foul of his charm.
He grinned at her now and she caught her breath as the blue eyes crinkled sexily at the corners. ‘Worked though, didn’t it,’ he said with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘Your aunt is putty in my hands.’