The Twelve-Month Mistress by Kate Walker Page A

said to each other that morning. He had faced the fact that he was, after all, in deeper than he’d thought. Far deeper than he had ever believed was possible. That he had finally met the woman he couldn’t walk away from.
    He’d looked at the decision he’d made during the day and known it was the only way open to him. He still hadn’t known if he believed in for ever, only that for this woman he had to give it a try. He’d taken out the ring that he’d bought, spending hours at a jeweller’s when he should have been at meetings. And he had struggled with a sensation that he had experienced only rarely in his life before.
    Fear.
    The fear that Cassandra might not feel the same way. That her change of mood, her strange behaviour over the past weeks had meant that she was the one who was preparing to turn her back on him . That she was the one who was about to walk. And as the time had dragged on and she hadn’t appeared, that fear had grown worse and worse.
    It was when he had come inside again that he had found the note, tucked between two photograph frames on the mantelpiece, in a way that was such a cliché it would havebeen blackly humorous if it hadn’t been for what it had contained.
    That note had taken all his worst possible fear and turned it dark as night.
    “‘I’m sorry it had to be this way”,’ he quoted cynically now, “‘but it’s over.” And that was it. Not even a dozen words. Would it have killed you to say why?’
    Cassandra flinched. She actually flinched away at his words, the sound of his anger. He couldn’t believe that she was shocked at his vehemence, surprised by his fury.
    What the hell else had she expected?
    Bitter memories surfaced. Memories of the night before she had left him, the delight he had felt in her then, the passion they had shared.
    ‘You gave no sign, woman. We slept together that night…’
    He knew he didn’t have to say which night. The way her head went back, the brief moment in which she closed her eyes, the way her face whitened, all told him without speaking that his words had hit home.
    ‘We made love…’
    But that brought her eyes open again in a rush, blazing into his in rejection of what he had said.
    ‘No, we didn’t! We did no such thing! We—we had sex…’
    ‘Sex—yeah.’
    Hearing the way she said it, the use of the basic, blunt term instead of any gentler euphemism, told him just what she had felt about it. All that it had meant to her. The thought burned like acid in his guts.
    He knew where Ramón kept the alcohol in his apartment and he headed over to the cupboard, pulling out a bottle of brandy and wrenching open the top of it with a vicious movement. Sloshing an unmeasured amount into a fine crystal glass, he lifted it, tilting it in Cassie’s direction ina mockery of a toast, before taking a deep swallow of the fiery liquid.
    ‘Yeah, we had sex,’ he went on savagely. ‘Good sex—the best!’
    He turned blazing dark eyes on Cassie’s ashen face, fury etched onto his face.
    ‘Don’t you dare to try to deny that, my darling!’
    ‘I—wouldn’t,’ she managed to whisper, raw and husky. ‘I couldn’t…’
    ‘No, you couldn’t, mi belleza ,’ he tossed back at her. ‘You most definitely could not. Not unless you are also going to claim to be the greatest actress the world has known. Remember I was there with you every inch of the way that night. I know how you felt; how you responded to me. You were there beneath me; I was with you, holding you, inside you! You can’t convince me that you weren’t out of your mind with wanting me—needing me…’
    ‘Yes— yes ! I mean no…’
    Cassie’s hands flew up and outward in a desperate gesture to cut him off when he would have raged on.
    ‘No, I can’t pretend I didn’t want you—I never have. I told you at the time that it was mutual.’
    ‘And yet less than twenty-four hours later, you had packed your bags and moved out—running from me—running