Lacybourne Manor (25 page)

It was times like those,
although infrequent, but always painful, she knew exactly what she
was.

“How is your new young man?”
Annie shouted, taking Sibyl out of her thoughts and she saw Jemma’s
eyes shift to her.

No one knew about the
arrangement but she had told Jemma, Kyle and Tina about Colin. She
had to, in case he called her away or she couldn’t get to work for
some reason. Jemma knew something was wrong but, in pure Jem Style,
she didn’t push it. If Sibyl wanted to tell her then Sibyl would
choose the time.

But of course, news this meaty
ran like wildfire through The Community Centre and all of its
patrons were agog. Not once in over a year had Sibyl had a
boyfriend.

“He’s been away,” Sibyl shouted
back.

“When’re we going to meet the
lad?” Annie yelled.

The idea of Colin being
addressed as a “lad” made Sibyl burst out laughing. The idea of him
confronting all the oldies at the Pensioner’s Club nearly made her
double up with laughter. He’d scare the pants off them; they’d have
to have a row of ambulances available to whisk the oldies directly
to hospital, all of them suffering from a rash of strokes and heart
attacks.

After she stopped laughing, she
yelled back, “He’s a very busy man, Annie. I don’t know.”

“Miss Sibyl, your phone’s
ringing,” Ben, one of the boys who was practising a somewhat
alarming rendition of a rap song (although neither she, nor Jemma,
really understood the words so they couldn’t judge) in her office,
stood by her and held out her mobile phone.

She saw who it was on the
display, quickly got up and, as she flipped it open, ran into the
Day Centre without looking back and, once there, slid the doors
closed behind her.

“Hello?” she greeted.

“Sibyl,” Colin returned
tersely.

It was Colin and, with that one
word, she knew he was angry.

“Colin.”

“Where the fuck are you?”

Sibyl was struck dumb at
his tone
and
his question.

He had no idea she worked at
the Community Centre.

Indeed, in all their time
together, he knew nothing personal about her except from what he
could tell through observation and from the photographs scattered
about her house.

And Sibyl did everything she
could to keep it this way. If she let him in, she knew somewhere
deep inside of her, she wouldn’t want to let him go. Even with what
she was to him, there was no denying the otherworldly strength of
her attraction to him or that bizarre connection she felt between
them. She knew this and she hated it just as much as felt strangely
safe in knowing it.

“I’m –” her mind raced to find
a lie.

“
You sound like you’re at
a club.” His voice was short, curt and obviously
furious.

“I’m not –”

“A bad one,” he
interrupted.

She felt a hysterical giggle
bubble in her throat and she gulped it down.

“I’ve been calling for an
hour,” he went on.

Her eyes rounded and she took
the phone away from her ear to stare at its display.

Blooming hell, she’d left it in
her office.

When she put it back to her
ear, he was still talking, “… home right away.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I want you home right
away.”

Her heart stopped and her
stomach plummeted.

Her girls were on the
stage.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“At the cottage, where I’ve
been for an hour.” His voice was ice cold.

You’re
available to me when I say, where I say,
he’d said.

Bloody,
bloody
hell.

“Colin –”

“Now,” he said simply.

“I’m at work,” she explained,
her voice a plea.

“I don’t care,” he bit out.

“Colin, I can’t –”

“Now, Sibyl,” and, without
another word, he rang off.

She flipped the phone shut and
then opened it again.

Three missed calls.

Bloody hell.

She ran to the Hall just as the
girls were jumping off the stage.

“Miss Sibyl,” Flower was
calling to her, her voice plaintive, “we can’t get that last part
right.”

“
We’ll
never
get
it right,” Katie moaned as the four of them stopped in front of
Sibyl.

Sibyl was in a panic. Flower,
Katie and their two friends Emma and Cheryl were staring at her
with need and expectation.

And it was Colin or four little
girls. She had to decide in a split second who needed her most.

It took her less than a
second.

Colin would have to wait and
Sibyl would have to suffer the consequences.

She turned off her phone,
buried it in the back pocket of her cords and took a deep
breath.

“What part is giving you
trouble?” she asked Flower with an overbright, shaky smile.

* * * * *

She arrived home nearly an hour
later even though the drive from work was twenty minutes. She
could, of course, lie and say that it took her that long to get
home; Colin had no idea where she worked. But Sibyl couldn’t lie,
she’d already lied to Colin once and if they kept stacking up she
knew she’d get them messed up and get caught in one of them one
day.

She pushed open the door to her
house, feelings of dread seeping through her body.

Colin was standing in the
living room staring out the back window, emanating rage even though
he didn’t move a muscle.

He had a drink in his hand. Gin
and tonic. Once she knew that was his preference, she made certain
she stocked it in her house, just like she made certain she had
Diet Coke and rum when her sister came around, good Scotch when her
father was there and margarita mix and tequila for her mother.

The minute she entered the
cottage, he turned around.

“Where the hell have you been?”
he demanded.

“I told you, Colin, I was at
work,” she replied softly.

He processed this and she could
tell by the muscle leaping in his jaw that he did not like it one
bit. Then he put his glass on a table and started toward her.

“Your phone is off,” he
informed her.

“Yes, I… well, I had to turn it
off.”

She really wished she was a
good liar. It would certainly help in this situation.

“
Why is that?” His voice
sounded curious, curious and cold and very,
very
menacing.

He’d reached her and when he
did, his hand came up to curl around the side of her neck. This
could have been a loverly gesture but, at that moment, it was most
definitely not.

“I was in the middle of
something urgent and –” she started, his eyes turned to stone and
immediately she stopped speaking.

“Did you forget the rules?” he
asked in a quiet, scary tone.

No, she didn’t, though she had
been harbouring some, small, lingering hope that he had, until that
moment.

She shook her head. “Colin, I
–”

“
Be quiet,” he ordered
softly, dangerously and thus she felt a tremor slide through her
and instantly ceased speaking.

She was already in enough
trouble; she was not stupid enough to throw fuel on what appeared
to be a rather blazing fire.

He looked away from her,
lost in thought, lost in
angry
thought. Then his eyes
focussed on something and he smiled a wicked smile.

Sibyl, in a panic, looked
behind her but all she saw was the dining area. She longed to say
something, even tell him why, share a piece of herself, maybe he’d
understand. But she didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to make him
any angrier than he already was.

Colin angry, she’d already
learned, was a very bad thing.

He put pressure on her neck
with his hand, bringing her toward him and as he did this, he
tilted her face up with his thumb on her jaw.

Then his head descended but he
didn’t kiss her.

Instead, with his lips against
hers, he said, “I’ve been trying to think of a suitable punishment
for you breaking the rules. I paid fifty thousand pounds for this
privilege, Sibyl. If you were an employee of mine, I’d sack
you.”

“Okay,” she agreed shakily and
perhaps a little foolishly. “Maybe you should sack me.”

“Then you’d have to pay back
the fifty thousand pounds.”

Her eyes rounded in alarm.
She’d already “anonymously” donated it to the Community Centre for
the minibus.

He watched her expression
closely.

“
I didn’t think so.” His
voice was smooth as silk but
not
in a good way.

“What are you going to do?” she
asked, her voice so far from silky it was ludicrous.

His arm closed around her as
his other hand caressed her cheek using the backs of his fingers.
She felt a shudder go through her as he drew her against his hard
body.

Once his arm was tight around
her waist, her body pressed firmly against his, his lips still
against hers and his eyes heavy-lidded, he said, “I’m going to fuck
you on the dining room table.”

She jerked her head back,
shock, fear, anger and hurt all at once coursing through her.

“No!” she cried.

“Oh yes,” he returned
smoothly.

“
No!” she repeated and
started to struggle against him.

She couldn’t believe this, he
wouldn’t be that cruel.

“Stop struggling,” he
commanded.

“Colin, you can’t do this! You
promised.”

“I can, I will and you’re going
to let me. In fact, you’re going to beg me to do it in the end.
I’ll see to that.”

This was a promise, a promise
she was pretty certain he could keep and she felt panic and despair
sear through her body.

“Colin, don’t do this!” she
pleaded, feeling every bit of the years of Mags’s gently-bred
empowerment of her girls flying out the window. “Please, don’t do
this.”

“Maybe you should try tears,
Sibyl. They won’t work but it might be amusing,” he taunted in an
ugly voice.

Sibyl glared at him and she
hated him in that moment and, in so doing, she felt fury rage
through her system. She completely forgot her vow never to lose her
temper again and she didn’t even consider counting to ten.

Therefore, she shouted, “Let go
of me!” and very nearly wrenched herself free but his hand at her
cheek dropped and his arm sliced around her, slamming her back
against his body.

“I said, stop struggling,” he
ground out.

“
They’re little girls,
Colin!” she yelled and he immediately stilled at her words but she
was so angry, she didn’t notice. “They’re little girls and they
needed me. I couldn’t run out on them. I would have, I promise you,
at any other time, but they
needed
me.”

She pulled free of his now
loosened arms and sucked air through her mouth, expelled it through
her nose like a bull and she stared at him with all the hatred she
felt for him at that moment.

“
They needed me,” she
repeated. “I picked them over you. I did it on purpose because they
needed me more. So, okay, you want to fuck me on the dining room
table, you want to make me beg for it? Do it! I understood the
consequences. But you should know
why!
”

He was watching her and she was
breathing heavily and this went on for longer then Sibyl could
endure.

“Do it!” she shouted.

“What little girls, Sibyl?” he
asked quietly and her body jolted at the words.

“I… what?”

Good goddess, she’d said
too much.

Her stupid,
stupid
temper!

“Who are these girls who needed
you?” he pressed.

She threw back her
shoulders at the same time she tossed her hair off them and her
guard immediately came up. She wouldn’t let him in,
couldn’t
let him in.

“
They’re a part of my
life, a part you’ve no place in, so it’s none of your goddamned
business,” she informed him truthfully. “You didn’t pay your fifty
thousand pounds for
that
privilege.”

Something flickered in his eyes
at that pronouncement but she was too caught up in her fury to
register it and nowhere near a place where she would allow herself
to understand it.

“What are you waiting for?” she
demanded.

To her stunned surprise he
turned and walked back across the room. Once there, he picked up
his glass and resumed his stance at the window.

She stood there for what seemed
like an eternity, watching him, but he didn’t move, although the
muscle in his jaw did.

Her fury started to drain out
of her (though not entirely) and she stalked to the kitchen.

She was pulling food out of the
fridge and cupboards to make dinner, just to have something to do
while Colin considered her next torment. She might as well be
fortified enough to suffer it.

Bran came through the cat door,
looked at his bowl of food which was full of biscuits, his
expression showing his distaste for this repast and looked at her.
His meaning was clear.

“You aren’t getting any more
wet food, you had some this morning,” she snapped at her cat.

Bran regarded her haughtily for
a moment then, although cats couldn’t shrug, still it seemed Bran
did so and then trotted out of the kitchen.

“Greedy little minx,” Sibyl
muttered under her breath as she slammed a pot on the stove. “He’d
weigh two stone if I didn’t dole out food like a prison warden.”
She knew she sounded like a lunatic, muttering to herself, but she
also didn’t care.

A movement at the doorway
caught her eye and her head jerked up to see Colin leaning against
the doorjamb watching her.