She turned away from the probing look in his eyes and stared out at a freighter on the lake. “What other reason could there be?”
* * *
SHE WAITED until she saw the limo turn in through the gates, then hurriedly paid off the taxi driver and got out of the cab. As she began walking up the dark drive, Michael emerged from the long black car. Her heart constricted painfully and her breathing began to speed up. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t care less about the parade right now, she just wanted to see Michael again.
Hardly realizing she’d done it, she called out to him softly. Her voice gave away too much. It sounded husky and tinged with longing.
He turned his head quickly, and when he saw her, there was no mistaking the surprise, then the happiness in the smile lighting his face. He began walking down the drive toward her, suit jacket flapping open with his long, fluid stride, accentuating his lean body.
She reveled in the thrilling knowledge that her presence brought him pleasure.
Tires squealed somewhere behind her as the glare of headlights swept across Michael’s face. She turned in horror to see a car roaring in through the gates, only a few feet away.
Without another conscious thought, she leapt to one side, instinctively putting up her arms to shield her face and landing hard in a clump of bushes.
In the confusion of the next few seconds she felt the rough, sharp branches digging painfully into her bare skin, heard Michael yelling out her name, his voice sharp with fear as the headlights sliced past and the car swerved off to the right, tearing up the gravel as it skidded to a stop.
Sudden, abrupt silence fell.
Dazedly aware of a million painful pokes and prickles, Sabrina struggled to lift her face from the protective cradle of her arms and disentangle her legs from the shrubbery. A car door slammed and then she heard Colin’s voice, high-pitched with fright.
“Sabrina, where are you?”
But Michael reached her first as she tried to turn over and sit up. “Darling, are you all right?” He sank down on his knees beside her.
His anxious voice shook with terror and his hands were trembling as they slid underneath her. She must be really dazed. Had he called her darling?
As he carried her out of the bushes she bit back a wince at the twigs scratching her bare arms. He placed her gently on the narrow grass verge bordering the drive and cradled her close. She could feel him shaking as he smoothed the hair away from her brow.
“I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.” She could have stayed in his arms all evening, but for the sight of Colin’s ashen face leaning over her and the terror in his eyes.
“Honest to God, Sabrina, I didn’t see you.” His voice sounded thick and hoarse, as if he were about to burst into tears. She could smell the unmistakable odor of alcohol.
“It’s all right, Colin.” She struggled to a sitting position and would have stood up to show him that she wasn’t badly hurt, but Michael wouldn’t let her. He held her tighter with one arm as the other hand ran over her body, apparently checking for injuries.
“He didn’t hit you, did he?”
“No, he didn’t hit me. I’m just winded from landing in the bush. If you’ll let me get to my feet, I’ll be fine.”
Colin let out a groan of relief and jumped forward to help her up. Michael rose as she did, keeping a supporting arm around her. As she gained her feet, a wave of dizziness made her sway a little and clutch at Michael’s arm. Only then did she notice the horrified chauffeur standing in the middle of the drive.
She stepped away from Michael and began shakily wiping off bits of brush and dirt.
“You see, I really am all right.” She gave them both a tremulous smile, intensely uncomfortable at being the center of all this attention.
Michael seemed unconvinced. He looked down at her with a worried frown.
“Thank God.” Colin sighed in heartfelt relief.
His father turned on him savagely. “And so you damn well should. Do you realize you could have killed her?”
Sabrina let out a cry and Colin flinched in shock.
“Of course I do.” This time his defiance was tinged with fear and he stammered a little. “But...but how was I supposed to know someone would be walking on our driveway at this time of night?”
“That’s besides the point. I’ve warned you about your driving before. And you’ve been drinking tonight, haven’t you?” Michael looked like a man at the end of his rope. “Hand me your keys.”
“You can’t do that to me.” Colin’s voice rose until it squeaked with anger. “You can’t treat me like a kid.”
“Don’t tell me how I can treat you,” Michael ground out. “I’ve tried to be patient....”
“You mean apathetic, don’t you? You don’t give a damn about me. Don’t start pretending that you do.”
At the venom in his son’s words, Michael’s face went dead white and his voice dropped to a deceptive quiet. “Colin, go to your room.”
The boy laughed hysterically. “Do you think you’re talking to a twelve-year-old? You can’t just send me to my room. That’s the way it’s always been, right? Send me away when you don’t want to listen to the truth.”
“The truth is that you’re a spoiled brat. I don’t know what your grandmother—”
“Don’t you talk about my grandmother! At least she cared. I hate you,” Colin screamed as he threw the keys at his father. “I wish you were dead!”
7
RIGID WITH TENSION, Michael stood watching his son run into the house, then he looked down at the keys in his hand.
He tossed them to his driver, who stood staring at him anxiously. “Could you put his car away, please.” He turned slowly toward her. The lines were etched a little deeper on his face, and he looked exhausted.
Sabrina walked over and wrapped her arms around him, her heart bursting with tenderness and compassion and love. How she longed to take his pain away.
After a tiny moment of hesitation, his arms closed around her, gathering her tightly to him. She could feel the trembling in his strong limbs and knew right now he needed her.
The sound of a car door softly shutting and being driven away seemed to bring him to awareness. Stepping away from her, Michael looked down into her face.
After a long, searching look, a slow smile curved his lips, banishing the bleakness from his eyes. “You’re very sweet,” he whispered, pressing his lips against her forehead in the lightest of kisses.
Then he put her gently from him and took her hand, examining the long scratch on her forearm. “We should do something about this before it gets infected.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
In answer he only shook his head and started toward the house, pulling her along with him. “I’m sure it will be, as soon we get some antiseptic on it.”
Opening the front door, he led her inside, but she pulled back. “No, Michael. I can do that at home. You’re wiped. I should just get out of here and let you get some rest.”
With a sudden surge of desperation, he squeezed her hand more tightly. He couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving him here alone.
“No,” he said quietly. “Don’t go yet. Please. I need to assure myself that you’re really all right.”
The foyer was dark and silent, except for a small lamp burning on the hall table. Colin must be in his room, the housekeeper long gone to her coach house, and as soon as the cars were locked up, Fred would retire to his apartment above the garage. The big house stood almost empty, peopled by the ghosts of unhappy memories.
He led her toward the staircase, but she resisted.
“No, Michael, this is silly!”
“Maybe. But I don’t really want to be by myself right now.”
She was very close and he was painfully aware of how alone they were. They could be the only people on earth. He wished that they were, that it could be as simple as that.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“It would be a terri
ble idea, but stay anyway, please.” He couldn’t believe he was reduced to pleading, but this need was so powerful, it would be so easy to lose himself in it, forget everything else, if only for tonight.
“It’s late. I really should go.”
Even though she quickly turned away, he could see the longing flaring in her eyes. He should let her go, but tonight, God help him, he hadn’t the strength to play the hero. She was so warm and soft and strong, and he needed her. Needed her caring, needed her tenderness. He stopped her by capturing her hand again, twining his fingers in hers, feeling her response in the tightening of her grip.
“At least let me look after your scrapes and bruises.” Sabrina opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand, his voice soft and huskily persuasive. “It’s the least I can do, and it would make me feel so much better.”
The slow trembling inside her began to spread, yet she allowed him to lead her upstairs and along a corridor toward the white painted double doors at the other end. She could no more resist him than stop breathing.
The passage was lit only by a single lamp on a small, delicately carved antique table. Alone in this big, quiet house, their footsteps made only the faintest brush on the carpet running down the center of the polished oak floor.
He opened the door and stood aside for her to pass. She stepped in, then stopped at the view that met her eyes.
The room lay in darkness. But a large, uncurtained bow window opened to the fragrant night air. Beyond the dense black mass of trees in the foreground rose the glittering city skyline, dominated by the spire of the CN Tower.
His hands closed over her shoulders as he moved her forward. Then he closed the door and flicked a switch. The glow of a floor lamp revealed a comfortable sitting room.
“Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll be with you in a moment.” He walked over to her left and opened a sliding door set into the white wainscotted paneling. Through the doorway she could see a bed, with a white duvet turned down in the soft light of a bedside lamp. His bedroom?
She had no business here. She should leave, and yet she walked over to the window and sank down to her knees on the upholstered window seat to look out at the skyline. Lord knows, she really should leave, but she yearned so much to just be with him.
“Okay, we’re all set.”
At the sound of his husky voice she spun around to see him holding a small box in one hand and a bowl in the other.
“Michael, I should be going.” Her voice emerged in a broken, throaty gasp. He affected her too deeply, so just being here became a risk.
“And you will, as soon as I get these seen to. Now sit down.” He put the box and bowl on the window seat, took her arms and firmly but gently sat her down.
He sank to his knees in front of her with a smile, then took her arm in his hand. She flinched as his warm fingers closed around her.
“Sorry.”
He’d come nowhere near the scratches. Merely his gentle touch sent shivers rippling down every nerve.
All at once she realized that her arms had been hurting the whole time.
He began to dab at the largest scrape on her forearm.
“Ouch!” she yelped, in response to the searing sting of the antiseptic.
“Hold still.”
She turned to see his glossy dark head bent over her arm, his lean fingers firmly curved around her wrist, and the pain was swept aside by the shudder of desire storming through her. She had to clench her teeth and try to get the feeling under control. Do something, say something, anything to distract herself.
“It’s such a nice view from this window.”
“It’s even nicer during the day when you can see the ravine.” He kept his eyes on his task, dabbing at her arm with the antiseptic-soaked cotton, but the sound of his low, resonant voice sent a tingle up her spine.
Glancing around, she took in the overstuffed, comfortable furniture, the wall full of books, the stereo in one corner and the wood-mantel fireplace. In a house of cold perfection, this room was warm and cosy and welcoming.
“I could spend my life in a room like this.”
He stopped cleaning the wound and went very still.
Suddenly she realized what she had said and hurried on. “I mean...you’ve got books, music and a view.... That’s all it takes to make me happy.” She tried to sound flippant, but her laughter had the nervous edge of fear.
In the pressing need to distract herself, she hardly knew what she was saying. He wanted her, but he would never force himself on her—she knew that instinctively. No, it was herself she was afraid of. Her response to him, her unbridled desire.
He lifted his eyes to hers and she trembled under his quiet, searching gaze. Was he trying to read her secret? But he simply smiled, as if to reassure her, then looked back down to resume tending her arm.
Unobserved, she examined his face. Even when he was smiling, there always seemed to be something melancholy deep down inside, something that seemingly couldn’t be erased, that struck a chord with her. What a sad life he’d endured. His poor relationship with his mother, a brief, doomed marriage, the tragedy of his wife’s death and now all his troubles with Colin. Suddenly she needed to know everything about him.
“Why did Colin have to live with his grandmother?”
He stopped stroking the cotton over her skin and looked up at her in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That’s none of my business—”
“He didn’t have to stay with his grandmother,” he cut in. “He chose to live with her. I’m sure you’ve noticed my son’s unequivocal dislike of me.”
His dispassionate tone made it even more shocking than if he’d blurted out the words in distress. As if he had long since taken the pain for granted and never expected it to change.
“I know how much that must hurt you. I know how much you love Colin.”
He screwed the cap back on the antiseptic, put it in the box and threw away the used cotton in a wastebasket under the small escritoire behind him.
Finally he sank back on his heels and looked at her, his face an emotionless mask. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Woman’s intuition.”
“If that woman’s intuition is leading you to feel sorry for me, don’t. The truth is, I did put him in Sybil’s care when I should have tried to make a go of it on my own. And I deserve what I got.” His bluntness made it only too clear that, once again, he didn’t want her pity.
But she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, believe him to be so self-serving. He simply wasn’t a man she could ever think capable of being as cruel and callous as he was making himself out to be.
“You must have been very young, and left on your own with a tiny baby!” She could picture all too easily how lost and anxious she would have felt in his position. She would turn to her parents. It was only natural. “You were only trying to do the best for Colin. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know you.”
He sighed loudly. “My son resents me today because, for all intents and purposes, I walked away from him.” She started to speak, but he cut her off. “No! Don’t try to excuse me. I did what I did.”
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t talk her into thinking badly of him. “Colin told me you were always around—messing up his life, as he put it.” She shrugged and gave an apologetic smile. “It doesn’t sound to me as if you abandoned him.”
“That’s obviously not the way Colin sees it.”
“Why didn’t you have him come and live with you when he was older?” She already knew Michael to be incapable of dishonorable behavior. She didn’t need to exonerate him, but she wanted to know him, to understand him.
“I tried. By the time Colin was four, I could finally afford a suitable home for him. Up to that point I’d been living in digs, which even in those days cost me practically everything I earned.”
“Where were your digs? Buckingham Pa
lace?” After all, he was still a Worth.
He gave her a reluctant smile. “I suppose it’s natural you’d assume I had the same kind of cash flow Colin enjoys, but I had to live on my salary, and in those early years, it didn’t amount to much.”
“Couldn’t your mother have helped you?”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Sybil was afraid I took after my father too much. That was her way of ensuring I developed a backbone.”
She felt a wave of resentment and anger at Sybil’s shabby treatment of her son. She had the resources to help Michael, but she didn’t seem to have done anything except take his son away from him. “So what happened when he was four?”
“Sybil talked me out of taking him, said he was happy, that it would be cruel to drag him away from the only home he’d ever known.”
“You could have transferred to the Toronto store.”
“I tried. But she wanted me in London. And after all, she was the boss.”
“But what about Colin? How did he feel about it?”
“I was almost a stranger to him. One trip a year, at Christmas, was all I could afford back then. Hardly enough to establish a relationship....”
It was hard not to think of how Sybil had indulged Colin. The Porsche, the Rolex, membership in the exclusive Royal Canadian Yacht Club. Not to mention the frequent trips to some of the most famous resorts the world had to offer. She couldn’t believe the disparity. Was that his mother’s way of punishing Michael for marrying against her wishes?
“Sybil made frequent trips across the Atlantic, but she never brought Colin. We battled about it constantly. She never failed to remind me of the obligation I was under.” His face hardened and she could hear the latent anger in his voice. “After all, she was doing me a favor. I was being selfish and ungrateful.”
She knew it must be an echo of Sybil’s words. “For wanting to see your son?”
“When it was so inconvenient and cruel to the child,” he continued in bitter mockery. “There was always an excuse. He didn’t travel well. He was teething. His nursery school program couldn’t be interrupted.”
Pathetically flimsy excuses to keep father and child apart, when Sybil should have been doing all in her considerable power to keep them together. “That was a terrible thing for her to do.”
Man Under the Mistletoe Page 12