Lacybourne Manor (44 page)

“You didn’t want me to leave?”
he asked.

This was definitely something
he wasn’t expecting and he found himself enjoying an entirely
different sense of triumph.

Her gaze was soft on his face,
her expression filled with longing but he could see fear there as
well.

“No,” she whispered.

“Why?” he pressed.

“Colin, please. Don’t ask me
these things.”

“
Why didn’t you want me
to leave?” he demanded, ignoring her request, now wanting more than
ever to hear what she had to say, indeed, he found he
needed
to
hear it.

“Because I thought you might
be…”

She stopped, her hand drifted
down his abdomen with seductive intent and he grabbed it and pulled
it to his chest.

“Sibyl –”

“
Someone special!” she
suddenly shouted, losing her battle against him, her stubbornness
and her body’s desire. “I thought you were someone special and I
didn’t want you to think I was some crazy woman and leave. I mean,
it isn’t every day someone sells their body and with it their soul
and all they feel is good and right about themselves for a minibus!
Don’t you find that odd? Strange? Utterly ludicrous? Do
you
want
to be with a woman like that? I think not,” she snapped, not
letting him react. Her words tore at him, lacerating his
heart.

All they feel is good and right
about themselves...

All of his desire to torment
her fled as he stared at her, his heart clenching with guilt.

He had nothing to say
except to point out the very important fact that she was
exactly
the kind of woman he wanted to be with but she didn’t give
him the chance to say it.

She reared away from him,
yanking her wrist out of his grasp, but he caught her and rolled to
his back, pulling her on top of him, his thigh still pressed
between hers and he lifted his knee.

“I’ve got to get out of here!”
she cried desperately.

She was near tears, he could
see them shimmering in her eyes.

“Sibyl.”

He knew then that, regrettably,
he’d lost control of the situation and she’d lost control of her
emotions. This wasn’t about desire anymore but about something
else, something he was powerless to control, something that was
totally Sibyl. The only thing he could do was ride it out.

“What?” she snapped. “You’re
ruthless, you know. Just plain old mean.” Not allowing him to
respond to those true, awful (but also rather adorable) statements,
she tried to pull away again and grunted with the effort then
stopped at once, for seemingly no reason, caught in her own
turmoil, her weight collapsed on him and this time, he grunted.

“
My parents warned me,
after the animal shelter debacle, they warned me I’d end up doing
something stupid and here I am. I should have said yes to you when
you asked me out after the night at the club. But how was I to know
you were, well…
you!
” she exploded. “That you
were the type of man who could, and would, with a couple of phone
calls, have gotten that vile minibus driver sacked. Or that you
could be gentle and tender, sweet and generous. I didn’t know who
you were, what you could do or that you’d even do it! I would have
done anything in these last few weeks to take all of this back so
you wouldn’t think I was a worthless, money-grubbing slut. But,
back then, I thought
you
were insane. Now I know
everything and…” She stopped abruptly, deciding again to fight, she
pushed against him then just as suddenly gave up and crumpled on
him, promptly lost control and burst into tears.

Finally given the opportunity
to get a word in edgewise, he was speechless at learning what he
did in her shouted, abject confession. He could do nothing but hold
her as she cried against his chest, moving only once to press her
face between his shoulder and neck. Her body was wracked with her
tears, tears wrought by something far beyond her confession,
something deeper, more painful. He was not certain he understood it
and definitely didn’t know what to do about it.

Colin was not used to not
knowing what to do. In fact, he was pretty certain there was never
a time when he
didn’t
know what to do.

Then she started speaking
again, her words stunted and jerky with tears. “It was just Meg,”
she said and this made him all the more confused because he didn’t
know who the hell Meg was, until she spoke again and it became
dreadfully clear as to what had been tormenting Sibyl for
weeks.

And what Sibyl Godwin said next
began to melt Colin Morgan’s brittle, cold heart.

“
When she broke her hip
falling out of the bus. I yelled at the minibus driver a few days
before, letting my stupid,
stupid
temper get the best of me.
Kyle told me I would make it worse for them if I upset the minibus
driver and I did. I made it worse! So much worse! And Meg got hurt
because of it.
Because of
me!
It was all my fault so I had to fix
it, no matter what it meant. I had to fix it. And then
you
came
in and gave me a way to fix it and it was the
worst
way possible but
I had to take it because it was the only choice I had and it
was
all my
fault!
”

His arms tightened around her
and he rolled her to her back, stretching his long length down her
side, he lifted himself on his elbow to look at her. Then he gently
moved the hair away from her face but she threw her arm over her
eyes, dislodging his hand and turned her head away from him to hide
her emotion.

And Colin felt his heart
squeeze at her anguish. It was clear she’d been holding onto this
for weeks. Blaming herself for something she could never possibly
have prevented, something she could not have caused, something that
was beyond her control.

“What happened to Meg wasn’t
your fault.” He tried to reason with her, thinking it the best
way.

She shook her head
determinedly. “It was.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Sibyl.
These things happen.”

She took in a shuddering breath
and slid her arm away from her eyes, allowing it to drop in defeat
at her side and her tear-brightened gaze moved to lock on his. At
the sight of her desolation, his gut clenched.

How could one person take
on such a world of pain? It wasn’t even
her
pain. What was it like
to live in that head of hers?

“Christ, Sibyl,” he muttered
because he could think of absolutely nothing else to say.

“Old people die after breaking
their hips, Colin,” she told him.

“Did she die?” he queried
cautiously.

“No,” she answered and took
another fractured breath. “But she’s been very hurt and she isn’t
getting better very fast.”

“Did she blame you?”

“No, of course not!”

He ran the back of his fingers
gently along her jaw, trying physically to soothe away her hurt.
“Then, sweetheart, you have to stop blaming yourself.”

“Don’t you see?” She threw up
her hands in exasperation at what she considered his extreme
obtuseness. “I did that with the minibus driver, which hurt Meg,
and then you came to my house and offered me money and you don’t
trust women easily –”

“Sibyl –” He tried to interrupt
her rampaging train of thought and its hysterical bent toward
self-recrimination and failed.

“
No!” she cried. “And I
played right into your hands so I’m
double
trouble, breaking old
people’s hips and making you think even worse of my sex. Once you
found out…” She stopped and then blurted out, “Of course you’d
leave me! Hell,
I’d
leave me!”

At this outrageous
pronouncement, he couldn’t have helped it to save his life.

He chuckled.

She was whipping herself up
into a drama, so caught in everyone else’s troubles she couldn’t
see what was happening around her.

She couldn’t see that he,
long since, had stopped using her and started courting
her.

She couldn’t see that even
though she pretended she wanted less of him, she never left, not
last night, not this morning, not the first night they met, not any
time before and not now.

She couldn’t see that she hid
something splendid (if a little warped and certainly a habit he
needed to break her of), an act of such selflessness it was
breathtaking, when telling him would have ended their battles days
ago.

At his chuckle, her eyes
flared.

“What’s so damned funny?” she
snapped, in a flash moving from despair to anger.

“Would you have taken the money
from Paul and slept with him for it?” Colin asked, watching her
closely, knowing her answer and trying to hide his mirth.

“Paul?” She blinked,
momentarily confused.

“The drunk from the club.”

“No! How could you even think
–?”

“Your medic?” Colin
persisted.

“
My… Steve?” Her eyes
narrowed. “Of course not. And he’s not
my
medic.” This was said
with extreme distaste as if the thought was beyond foul.

Her reaction satisfied
Colin tremendously.

He shook it off and charged on,
“Can you think of anyone, besides me, who you would have taken the
money from, sold your body to for a minibus?”

This stopped her. She froze and
glowered at him. Then her eyes narrowed again and he could swear
(to his immense relief) he saw the dawning of understanding.

Then, to his surprise and
extreme displeasure, she said, “Yes.”

“Who?” he clipped.

“Clark Gable!” she announced
and tried to slip out from under him but he hauled her back, this
time, he was no longer chuckling but laughing, his entire body
shaking with it.

Then Colin informed her
helpfully when he had his humour under control, “I think, darling,
you’ll find he’s dead,”

“
Well,” she muttered
huffily, “I would have taken it from him when he was alive, of
course, during his
Gone with
the Wind
years.”

“I’m in good company then,”
Colin muttered as he dropped to his side and pulled her against his
body.

“
It’s time for
you
to
answer some questions now,” she demanded, recovering quickly from
her drama and spearing him with her eyes.

He dipped his chin to look at
her, giving her his full attention.

“What do you want to know?” he
asked without hesitation.

“This Royce and Beatrice
business, you and me, what am I to you now? What does that mean to
us?”

“We have seven months to figure
it out.”

Her body stilled and her eyes,
emerald before, started shifting back to hazel. This, he was
beginning to interpret, when not just her norm, was when she was
confused, mildly upset or melancholy.

“So nothing has changed?” she
asked.

He shook his head and she bit
her lip, her eyes sliding to the side, away from his, trying to
mask her disappointed reaction. It took every ounce of his
willpower not to grin.

“I will warn you,” his tone was
mock-severe, “it might take eight months for us to figure it out.”
Then he tugged gently on her hair to pull her head back and he
ducked his own and kissed her throat, his other hand moving to the
small of her back to form its lazy figure eights.

Her body jerked.

“Eight?” she breathed.

He noted, again, she said it in
(weak) protest but she didn’t bloody well mean it.

He had her, he knew in
that moment, she was definitely
his
.

“Yes, maybe nine or even ten,”
he replied.

“Do I still have to do what you
tell me to do?”

“Yes.”

He felt her slump and he
grinned against the skin at her throat then he slid his lips up her
neck to taste the area just under her ear.

Sibyl trembled.

“Obviously you can’t see anyone
else but me,” he warned, moving his mouth to hers and he brushed
his lips there, feather-soft.

“What if I don’t agree? The
original bargain was two months; you keep changing the goal posts.
Now you know what I did with the money, and you obviously don’t
mind, you can get a tax break, that ought to buy back some
time.”

He ignored her thoughtful
suggestion (although he mentally filed it away). “You never know,
it could take a year.”

She gasped.

“I’m not doing this for a
year!” she cried.

“No?” he asked, his hand slid
back under her t-shirt and his finger swirled around her
nipple.

She gasped again, this one much
different than the last.

At her reaction, he gave her a
smug smile as he felt his body tighten and he kissed her freckled
nose.

And she gasped again, this one
soft and, finally, full of understanding.

“Colin,” she whispered, “You
called me ‘sweetheart’.”

Colin didn’t reply.

Her eyes liquefied instantly to
sherry.

“Colin?”

He stared her straight in the
eye. “Yes?”

“Do I have to be where you want
me, when you want me?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

He felt her relief as she moved
into him, wrapping her arms about his waist and pressing her soft,
sweet body against his as a reward.

“So, can we start over?” she
asked, her voice gentle and honeyed, and, if he heard it correctly,
happy. The glorious sound of it nearly made him groan.