Mistress on His Terms

by Catherine Spencer

  “You heard.”

  “The almighty Sebastian Caine is skinny-dipping?”

  “That’s right. And if you insist on joining me, you’re going to be doing the same.”

  “Forget it! I’m not putting on a one-woman peep show for your entertainment.” She jumped back down to the pool deck and scuttled over to where she’d left her towel and sandals.

  She moved quickly, but he was even quicker, stroking powerfully across the width of the pool to where she had bent to retrieve her belongings. He grabbed her by the ankle, a move to which she greatly objected. “Chicken!” he taunted.

  She squatted down and faced him eyeball to eyeball. His lashes clustered in wet clumps, his hair lay plastered to his skull and his skin gleamed bronze in the unearthly green light of the pool. “If you’re so brave, hop out here where I can get a good look at all I’m missing.”

  He laughed and without warning switched his hold to her wrist and yanked her forward so that she pitched face first into the water. Her limbs tangled with his; flesh slid against flesh, fabric against fabric.

  She came up sputtering and furious. “You lied! You are wearing swimming trunks!”

  “And you,” he said, smiling evilly, “were just about wetting yourself in anticipation of discovering otherwise.”

  She spat out a mouthful of water. “You wish!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The way he was staring at her mouth disconcerted her more than a little. For no logical reason, a warmth stole through her that had nothing to do with the balmy night. “What?” she snapped, when she could bear his scrutiny no longer.

  His gaze scoured the rest of her features. “Still trying to figure out what’s really going on behind that innocent face.” He drifted so close that there was scarcely an inch of water separating their bodies. “Come on, Lily,” he murmured, persuasive as a lover bent on seduction, “it’s just you and me—no one else around to overhear. Tell me what you’re really after.”

  “I already have,” she said, suddenly fighting for breath. He was all rangy, hard muscle; an athlete posing as an officer of the courts. Tanned when he should have been pale and bookish; exciting when he should have been dull and austere. Nearly naked when he ought to have been buttoned up in a three-piece suit and conservative tie.

  All right, her heart told her, when her head was insisting he was all wrong!

  She tried to back away from him but he forestalled her by bracing both his arms against the side of the pool so that she was imprisoned between them. She tried to look away, but his eyes held her captive, their blue flame burning clean through to her soul. “Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Because I’ve learned to trust my instincts.” He leaned closer; so close she could detect on his breath a trace of some sweet, heavy wine—port, perhaps, or apricot brandy—and almost feel the new beard growth stubbling his jaw. “And they tell me you spell nothing but trouble.”

  For no good reason at all, she was a mess. Her pulse was fluttering and stalling like a demented butterfly. Her windpipe felt constricted all the way from her lungs to her throat. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. If she moved them, she’d make contact with some part of that tanned, toned body hemming her in so effectively. And regardless of how his instincts were operating, hers were screaming out loud and clear that touching him anywhere would be a very unwise move.

  So she sort of hung there in the water, and doing her best to eliminate the silly, adolescent breathiness still plaguing her voice, said, “I hope you like crow because you’re going to be eating a lot of it before the summer’s over.”

  He opened his mouth to speak and she cringed inwardly, expecting he’d fire back some pithy retort. Instead their gazes locked and everything around them grew suddenly still, leaving them isolated in a capsule of expectant silence.

  Nothing prepared her for what happened next and, afterward, she couldn’t have said who took the first step in the agonizingly slow journey that followed. Perhaps neither of them did, and some powerful magnetic current drew them together until their lips were barely touching.

  The impact to her senses stunned her. He was so unfeeling in many ways—in his attitude, the things he said to her—that she’d have expected his lips to be cruel. But they settled on hers with such eloquent finesse that she found herself yearning toward him.

  At that, the pressure of his mouth increased. His hand meandered down to bracket the indentation of her waist. A thousand sensory pinpoints sprang to life, electrifying the swath of skin grazed by his fingertips. His hips nudged hers, a fleeting contact only, but enough to remind her that what was happening above water had repercussions below the surface.

  It was all so unexpected, so foolish, really. They disliked each other. Their short acquaintance was larded with suspicion and wariness. Yet their bodies recognized a rapport their minds refused to acknowledge, and melded with such complete trust that she found herself dangerously close to losing sight of his true objective.

  This was not irresistible attraction run wild, nor even rampant lust. It was calculated seduction.

  She pulled away just a fraction and met his unblinking gaze. Was it really fire she detected in the depths of his eyes—or the cold blue steel of dedicated hostility?

  “Maybe,” he said, an unaccustomed hoarseness ruffling his words, “it’s time we called an end to this.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Not until you explain what you meant by that remark you made earlier tonight, just before you left the library—the one about not all women having the morals of alley cats. Was what happened just now your way of putting the theory to the test?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TO HIS credit, he didn’t feign ignorance of what she was referring to, but nor did he give her a straightforward answer. “Never mind. I spoke out of turn,” he said, then did a neat underwater flip and swam to the other side of the pool.

  Before she’d begun to catch her breath or recover from the devastation of his kiss, he’d climbed out and disappeared along a side path toward the stables, moving so swiftly that she was left to wonder if she’d imagined the whole kissing incident.

  That pretty much set the pattern for the days that followed. For the most part, Sebastian avoided having to deal directly with her, which wasn’t too difficult since his law office was in town. But for a gainfully employed man, he seemed able to take a lot of time away from his clients to monitor her movements.

  One morning, she was busy cutting dead heads from the roses and suddenly got the eerie sense she was being watched. She looked around, found the garden deserted, then caught sight of him spying on her from a window in the house. What did he think, she wondered, half amused, half annoyed. That she planned to steal the best blooms and sell them on the nearest street corner?

  Another afternoon so soporific with heat that it was all anyone could do to walk six paces without melting, she and Natalie were fooling around in the pool. The glare on the water was blinding, so when she hauled herself onto the tiled deck and raced to the umbrella table to apply more sunscreen, she didn’t notice Sebastian lounging in one of the chairs until she almost tripped over his feet.

  “Having a good time?” he inquired, his eyes unreadable behind dark aviator glasses but his tone so frosty she almost shivered. At least, that’s how she chose to justify the goose bumps popping out all over her skin, because to admit to the other possibility—that being this close to him brought back too-vivid memories of their last intimate encounter—was not to tolerated.

  “Yes,” she replied, adopting the confrontational attitude that was becoming almost habitual in her dealings with him. “Does that offend you?”

  “When it interferes with my sister’s studies, it does. You might have nothing else to do but romp in the sun, but Natalie will be writing final exams in another month and her time would be better occupied studying. In case you haven’t heard, her ambitions amount to something a bit more intellectually taxing than arranging flowers.”r />
  Lily had a very respectable diploma in horticulture to her credit but, “Natalie is an adult, Sebastian,” she told him, choosing to save until another time the news that she was not quite the mental lightweight he perceived her to be. “I doubt she needs you to organize her time or remind her of her priorities. And since she happens to be as much my sister as she is yours, you can safely assume I, too, have her best interests at heart.”

  He whipped off his glasses and subjected her to one of his most imperious stares. It was criminal, she thought, that any man should be blessed with such compellingly beautiful eyes. They put a woman off-kilter, made her forget she was dealing with the enemy and tempted her to dwell on possibilities best left to molder in obscurity. “That kind of sentiment might fool everyone else around here,” he said flatly, “but it doesn’t wash with me so you might as well save your breath.”

  The rejection stung worse than a slap on her wet skin, though heaven knew she should be used to it by now. “You want to know your trouble?” she countered, reining in a strong urge to shake her wet hair and drip water all over his immaculately creased dress pants. “You’re jealous because you’ve forgotten how it feels to have fun. That’s assuming you ever knew how in the first place, of course! And I’ll tell you something else—you’re also unnaturally possessive. You think you own Natalie, and it’s been a real shock to your system to have someone else usurp her affections.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Lily,” he sneered. “You happen to be the flavor of the week, that’s all.”

  That he remained so impeccably unruffled by her attack, while she’d worked herself into an outright sweat by his was the only excuse she could offer for what she said next. “Flavor of the week, hmm? So that’s what you found so irresistible the other night that you simply had to sample it by kissing me!”

  He rose languidly to his feet and towered over her. “I kissed you to relieve the tedium of your incessant chatter, but it’s not a mistake I intend to repeat. Go back to your girlish games with my sister, cupcake. You’re out of your league trying to match wits with me.”

  “And what are you going to do to pass the time, Sebastian? Continue to play the part of my personal prison warden?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do! Or did you think I haven’t noticed the way you’re always lurking in the bushes like some third-rate undercover agent waiting to catch me in some unspeakable act of espionage?”

  “Good God!” he said, a small smile curling his mouth. “I had no idea you numbered paranoia among your other dubious qualities. Thank you for drawing it to my attention.”

  Having once again had the last word, he brushed off his hands and sauntered away.

  And so it went for nearly two weeks: parry and thrust, every time their paths happened to cross. By the morning of Hugo’s birthday, she was ready to weep with frustration at Sebastian’s unremitting antipathy toward her, and almost dreaded that night’s party for fear of how he might try to humiliate her in front of the guests.

  She could only hope he’d have eyes for no one but his date, Penny Stanford. When she confided as much to her sister, though, as they worked on the flower decorations, Natalie declared rather ambiguously, “Sebastian might like to pretend that’ll be the case but if you ask me, his eyes have been wandering of late and it’s my bet someone else has become the object of his affections.”

  Unwilling to admit that the unpleasant lurch of her stomach could possibly be ascribed to dismay, Lily made a minor adjustment to one of the floral arrangements and said with studied indifference, “Really? Anyone I know?”

  Natalie stifled a giggle. “Oh, yes—better than anybody, if you get my drift! But I’ve already said too much and Sebastian would throttle me if he knew I’d even brought the subject up. He’s a very private individual, you know.”

  “Secretive’s the word I’d use.”

  Natalie looked at her curiously. “Don’t you like him, Lily?”

  The question was simple enough; the answer unexpectedly complex.

  Did she? Too much, perhaps, despite their frequent run-ins? And was the feeling mutual? Was the reason they worked so hard at insulting each other nothing but a defense mechanism designed to prevent them from facing up to underlying feelings neither was brave enough to acknowledge? If so, how adolescent!

  “I’m not sure,” she finally said. “He’s a difficult person to read and he’s seemed resentful of me from the first.”

  “It’s because of the way your mother treated my—” Natalie began, then turned bright red and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, sorry, Lily! I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Lily’s heart gave a peculiar jolt. Hugo had changed the subject when she’d tried to ask him about her mother, Sebastian had clammed up, and now Natalie was behaving as if she’d dragged some horrendous skeleton out of the closet by mentioning Genevieve’s name. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have, but now that you’ve started, I wish you’d finish.”

  “I can’t. I promised Dad.” She made a big production of checking her watch. “Heavens, look at the time! Eleven o’clock already. Mom and Dad’ll be back from the golf club soon, and we haven’t even begun on the table decorations! You get started on them and I’ll go cut more sweet peas.”

  Puzzled, Lily watched her leave. What did they all know—or think they knew—that they couldn’t share with her?

  “Sometimes, marriages fail, especially the May-December kind like mine and Genevieve’s,” was all Hugo would admit, whenever she pressed him to talk about the past. “There was some bitterness, we parted and I elected to forfeit my right to know my child. It wasn’t a wise choice but, at the time, it seemed the best choice. Enough to say, my dear Lily, that I have lived with the guilt of that decision ever since and welcome this chance to make up for my omission. Let’s leave it at that and go forward from here.”

  Easy for him to say, when he already had all the answers, but impossible for her! Sometimes, she wished she’d never found out that Neil wasn’t her biological father. Just when she was beginning to come to terms with her parents’ death, her life had been thrown into turmoil yet again, and she hadn’t known a moment’s real peace since.

  Well, no more! The truth was supposed to set a person free and before the day was ended, she intended to find release from her particular prison.

  She waded in as soon as Natalie returned with the sweet peas. “You know, Natalie, I’d never ask you to betray a confidence, so perhaps you aren’t free to talk about my mother, but there’s nothing to stop me from telling you what I know about her.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you’d forget I ever mentioned her name.”

  “I can’t. She doesn’t deserve to be swept aside like this, as if she were never of any consequence.” She touched her sister’s arm pleadingly. “She was a wonderful wife and a wonderful mother. I never came home from school to an empty house, the way some children do. She was always there, eager to hear about my day, and always ready to welcome my friends. She made our home a place that was full of love and warmth and laughter, and it hurts me that no one here thinks well of her.”

  Natalie plucked at the sweet pea stems uncertainly. “People aren’t always what they seem, Lily.”

  “I know that. Why else do you think I contacted Hugo this last May? Because there was an important part of my mother’s life that I knew nothing about. I had to fill in the blanks.”

  “But don’t you see, there’s a problem right there? Your parents died last September, yet you waited eight months before you decided to get in touch with Dad. If it was that important to learn what happened, why didn’t you come to him sooner?”

  “Because I didn’t know he was my father until after the estate was settled, and probating a will takes months. As soon as it was complete, I had access to the safe-deposit box my parents had leased from the bank that looked after their financial affairs, and that’s when I found the envelope.”

 
She drew in a steadying breath as she recalled that fateful morning. “I never expected it would be easy, finalizing the last details, but at first it didn’t seem so bad. Money is nothing more than figures printed on a statement and can’t really hurt a person. Even cash possesses a sort of cold impersonality, having already passed through thousands of strangers’ hands before touching ours. But the safe-deposit box…”

  “If this is too difficult for you, you don’t have to go on.”

  “Yes, I do! I have to make you understand that I need to find closure before I can get on with my life.” Determined to finish what she’d started, Lily blinked furiously to stem the threatening tears. But the same wave of painful nostalgia that had assailed her when she’d opened the box swept over her again as she relived the moment.

  “The little velvet bags protecting my mother’s more valuable pieces of jewelry retained traces of her perfume, Natalie. One of her fine blond hairs was tangled in the clasp of a gold chain. A cameo locket held miniatures of her and Neil. Their signatures were scrawled on various documents—the deed to their house, a copy of their will, a life insurance policy. It was as if my mother and father were suddenly standing there beside me, encouraging me to go on. I felt their presence so strongly, it was…unnerving. Uncanny.”

  She stopped and pressed a hand to her trembling mouth for a moment. “Then I found the envelope, hidden under everything else at the very bottom of the box, and learned that Neil wasn’t my father at all, nor was he my mother’s first husband. And I felt betrayed by the people I loved the most.”

  “Was it a letter to you?” Natalie’s voice was hushed with sympathy.

  Somehow, Lily managed a laugh. “If only it had been, I might not be pleading my case with you now. But no, there was nothing addressed to me personally. I found a photograph of my mother. She looked very young, but I recognized her immediately. She was wearing a wedding outfit—very formal, all lace and satin, with a train and a veil and everything—and was on the arm of a man a good bit older. He wore a morning suit and I realize now that he was Hugo. There was a photographer’s inscription on the back—Mr. and Mrs. Hugo Preston, Stentonbridge, Ontario, and the date—two years before I was born.”