Lacybourne Manor (32 page)

She ignored his question. She
wasn’t in a good mood and she had bigger fish to fry.

“What are you doing here?” she
snapped angrily and his eyes cut to her.

“Sibyl –” he began, his voice
patient.

“Don’t you ‘Sibyl’ me. What are
you doing here?” she demanded.

He came toward her but she
backed away and he halted.

“
This isn’t
your
place, this is
my
place,” she informed him
hotly. “You aren’t supposed to be here. How did you find out about
this?”

Before he could answer a knock
came at the door and Kyle poked his head in.

He looked at Sibyl then at
Colin then said, “All right, mate?”

Colin inclined his head.

Sibyl, feeling the bizarre need
to act politely (for Kyle’s sake), said, “Colin, this is Kyle. He’s
our caretaker. Kyle, this is Colin.”

She didn’t give Colin a
role. Colin
had
no role that she’d share with anyone at the
Centre.

“Colin, good to meet you,
mate,” Kyle greeted and his eyes shifted to Sibyl. “Bus’s comin’,”
he announced.

The door closed again and
Sibyl closed her eyes and muttered, “Bloody,
bloody
hell.”

“Listen to me,” Colin demanded
but she opened her eyes, sent him a savage glare and interrupted
him.

“I have to go help get the
oldies on the bus. We’ll talk later.” She was walking to the door
as she spoke but stopped and then her glare turned murderous.
“Unless there’s something you require?”

He watched her closely for a
moment, his expression unreadable then shook his head.

Instead of leaving, like she
should have done, she ranted, because that was what she did when
her temper flared out-of-control.

“
This isn’t fair, this
isn’t right, this
isn’t
a part of our bargain and
you know it,” she told him on an infuriated whisper.

“Come here,” he ordered
gently.

She stood where she was and
continued glaring.

“Sibyl, come here.” This was
said in a tone that could not be defied.

She walked toward him but did
it in a way that showed she didn’t like it.

When she arrived close enough
to Colin, his arm stole around her waist and, with his other hand,
he tipped her face up to look at him with a crooked finger under
her chin.

“I was curious how you spent
your days.” His voice was low and soft and he was looking at her
like he’d looked at her in the Centre.

To her dismay, and against her
will, she felt her body react to it by relaxing.

She fought against her body
but, it must be said, didn’t entirely succeed with her
struggle.

“I’m very angry with you,” she
announced in an effort to control her emotions.

“I can tell,” he grinned,
completely unaffected by her words.

She sought refuge in fury.
“Don’t you grin at me, Colin Morgan. You haven’t heard the last of
this.” Then, for her sanity (and for the oldies), she tore free of
his arm and stalked out of the office.

Several of the oldies were
still packing up but she could see the minibus was already there
and some of them were getting panicked.

Colin had followed her and she
was helping Marianne pack up her cigarettes, lighter and a variety
of napkin wrapped food she hadn’t eaten at lunch and would consume
for dinner (Tina always gave Marianne a little extra because
Marianne didn’t have much and would skip dinner if she didn’t).

Sibyl took Marianne’s heavy
carrier bag filled with whatever Marianne (or any of the oldies,
most of them seemed to lug around bulky carrier bags) carried
around with her all the time, turned around and saw Colin staring
out the windows at the bus.

“Make yourself useful,” she
ordered grumpily and began to hand him the carrier bag but,
uncharacteristically impolitely, he didn’t take it and she lifted
her eyes to his face.

Now he was staring out the
window and whatever he saw made the warm, tender expression he was
wearing moments ago fade to one of complete fury.

Then he turned without a word
and, with long, quick, ground-eating strides, headed for the
door.

She whirled to see what had
made him react in such a way and saw Annie trying to alight into
the bus.

Annie, blind and reaching, was
not having a good time of it and all the while the minibus driver
stood not two feet away, smoking a roll up and not assisting her,
even though it was clear Annie was having trouble.

Sibyl, still carrying
Marianne’s bag, ran after Colin. She exited the door in time to see
Annie catch her foot on the step of the bus and stumble. Her heart
tripping in alarm, Sibyl sucked in her breath just as Annie righted
herself at the last minute.

Kyle was at the back loading a
folded wheelchair so he couldn’t see what was happening.

The minibus driver flicked his
butt into the grass.

“What in bloody hell is going
on here?” Colin demanded while Sibyl raced up behind him. At his
deep, angry voice, most jumped and everyone turned to stare.
“Everyone, get off the bus,” Colin ordered and Sibyl’s mouth
dropped open in shock but before she could say anything, Colin
turned to the driver. “What’s your name?” he demanded in his
smooth, even tone that said, in about two seconds, the driver was
about to have Colin’s fist in his face.

“Who’re you?” The driver,
clearly not that bright, didn’t read Colin’s tone.

“
I said,
what’s your goddamned
name?
” Colin roared.

Sibyl (and pretty much every
one else) jumped again. She quickly put down Marianne’s bag and ran
to help Annie away from the minibus.

“Why’d you wanna know?” the
driver asked on a mini-sneer.

“I want to know,” Colin
enunciated every word with perfect clarity, “because I’ll need to
be certain I get the right man sacked.”

The minibus driver stared at
Colin goggle-eyed and everyone gasped (including Sibyl).

“You can’t get me sacked!” the
driver snapped.

“Would you like to bet?”
Colin’s voice was still smooth, dangerous and had a very sharp
edge. “Did you not see that woman struggling to get into the bus?”
he demanded.

The minibus driver shrugged,
thinking it was a good idea to throw fuel on the fire. “Not my
job.”

“
You’re not only
incompetent, you’re negligent. You drive a bus for elderly people,”
Colin informed him. “That
makes
it your job.”

“Have you read my job
description?” this time the driver outright sneered. “I don’t think
so.”

“
Your job description
will be changed by five o’clock tomorrow night. Unfortunately, you
won’t be
in
the job to see it.” That said, Colin turned his
back on the driver and said to Sibyl, “Get everyone out of the
bus.”

Regardless of the fact that his
eyes were blazing, carefully, Sibyl said, “Colin, this is their
only way home. It would take Kyle and I –”

While she was talking, he
pulled his mobile out of his jacket, flipped it open and punched
two numbers.

Once he’d done this, he
spoke into it. “Mandy, get me…” He surveyed the crowd that was now
exiting the minibus, gathering around and staring at Colin with
avid fascination. “Fifteen taxis to the Community Centre at Cadbury
Council Estate in Weston. Right now. Have them do a docket and bill
it to us.” He paused. “Yes. Right
now
.”

At his deadly tone, Sibyl felt
a chill go down her spine just as she felt a soft flutter in her
heart.

He flipped the phone shut.

“Don’t bother me, mate. Makes
my afternoon easier,” the minibus driver remarked.

Colin looked over his shoulder
at him. “Get used to it; you’re going to have a great deal of free
time on your hands.”

Something about the way
he said it made pretty much everyone believe it except those who
didn’t couldn’t hear what was going on but when they were
told,
they
believed it too.

“
Think you’re the big
man, get me sacked.
She
couldn’t get me sacked,” the
minibus driver taunted, making it known he most definitely did not
have a very high IQ
or
enough instinct to last an hour in the
wild.

Colin slowly turned back to the
man, so slowly it was crystal clear he was doing so to keep himself
in rigid control.

Sibyl held her breath.

When he spoke again, Colin’s
voice was as rigidly controlled as his body.

“
If you ever get the
chance again, which you will not, you will refer to her as Miss
Godwin. And
Miss
Godwin
doesn’t know seventeen councillors
on North Somerset Council, all of whom I’ll be having my staff
calling in five minutes and telling about
you
. If they don’t hand me
your job by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll have every paper,
TV and radio station in Weston and Bristol all over this estate.
The Councillors will undoubtedly listen at that point as they won’t
want to be the ones who allowed an incompetent, uncaring,
thoughtless bastard to look after their community’s
grandparents.”

After this stunning
declaration, Mrs. Griffith shouted, “I know two councillors and I’m
calling them in five minutes too!”

“I know three!” a gentleman
(another one of Sibyl’s favourites) named Gilbert called.

“I don’t know any but I’m
calling them anyway,” Marianne yelled.

Before the oldies jumped the
minibus driver and brained him with their carrier bags, Kyle, ever
the peacekeeper, snapped open the now unloaded wheelchair and
shouted, “All right, everyone back into the Centre!”

Colin flipped open his mobile,
dialled his two numbers again and said, “Mandy, I want you and
every administrator on staff to call every North Somerset
Councillor in my Rolodex and tell them…”

Sibyl didn’t wait to hear what
he said. She helped Annie to the Centre, scooping up Marianne’s
carrier bag along the way, all the while her mind whirling in an
attempt to process what had just occurred.

Did Colin just make a scene in
front of the Day Centre, battling her hated minibus driver nemesis
and conquering him for a bunch of elderly people he didn’t even
know?

She couldn’t quite believe it.
She wanted to but she couldn’t.

And this was
because
this
was the kind of stuff a dream man was made
of.

And, because of what she’d done
and who she was to him, Sibyl had lost all hopes of ever being his
dream woman.

Dazed, she helped everyone
settle back into the Centre, vaguely noticing they were all
watching her closely.

She didn’t pay attention.

Instead, she was thinking there
would be, soon, a life without Colin and not always, but
increasingly often, he acted like her dream man.

Most especially that day.

But there was nothing she could
do about that the day when her life would be without Colin.

In the meantime, however,
it was a life
with
Colin and, in those moments she saw him tearing
into her evil nemesis, she knew that she was going to make the most
of every damned second of the time she had.

* * * * *

Fourteen (Colin had made
a
slight
error in counting) oldies, Kyle, Tina, Jemma and four ten
year old girls all crowded around the big windows that looked out
on the patch of worn grass in front of the Day Centre.

They saw their adored,
beautiful, American girl wander across the grass slowly toward the
tall, dark, broad-shouldered, handsome man who was talking angrily
on his mobile phone.

They watched as she approached
him, stood in front of him toe-to-toe, then she leaned in and
rested the top of her head against his chest, placing her hands
lightly on either side of his waist.

They watched, too, as he slid
one hand up her spine to curl it around the back of her neck, he
pulled the phone from his ear and bent his dark head to kiss her
honey one.

Then he put the phone back to
his ear and kept talking.

Everyone in the room decided
they made a striking couple and felt, considering what they knew
about Sibyl and what they’d seen of her man, that they were the
perfect match.

“I think we know who our
anonymous donor is,” Tina whispered to her husband and Kyle
nodded.

“I’m writing to her mother,”
Mrs. Griffith declared.

“
I’m going to
adopt
him
too,” Annie shouted.

And then fifteen taxis started
arriving at the Centre.

Tranquilliser Dart

Colin was in his office on his
phone

He’d gone back to Bristol after
visiting Sibyl at the Community Centre to return phone calls and
make certain the incredible ass who drove the minibus was, indeed,
sacked (which, as Colin threatened, a number of councillors assured
him, he would be, first thing in the morning).

Once he’d heard the news from
the bus driver’s line manager directly, Colin felt a strange,
intensely pleasant sense of satisfaction.

He didn’t question it, he
didn’t have time. He had other things to do.

That task completed, Colin also
phoned a surveyor to have a look at the Community Centre as a
whole. From what he could see, the place was a fire trap, a health
hazard and needed significant renovations.