“Oh my God, Mr. Stevenson!”
“Miss Cates.” He could hardly spit out her name. “Get off me instantly!” But she was already scrambling to get down off his shoulders, which wasn’t easy because he didn’t help one bit. She slid sideways, trying to get one leg on the floor, but somehow ended up dangling upside down.
“Miss Cates, have you gone crazy!” he spluttered, trying to pry her legs off his shoulders.
Sabrina clutched at his thighs. “Stop it, you’re going to drop me on my head, you fool!” she screamed, then clamped her lips shut as she realized what she’d just called him.
But at that same moment she noticed a foreign object clutched in her hand, something small, gray and furry. She squealed and flung it away, losing her grip and sliding off the rest of the way to land in a heap on the floor.
“What is the meaning of this outrageous behavior?” Walter’s voice tightened to a venomous hiss. “Miss Cates, you are the most incompetent, insubordinate, clumsy, stupid, irritating, pestilential employee it has ever been my misfortune to run across!”
Dimly aware of the two carpet layers staring at them in shock, Sabrina sat up, a little dazed. Shaking her head to clear it, she looked up and her eyes widened in horror. Then she put a hand to her mouth as laughter burst out of her.
He was bald, completely bald, his bumpy head shining under the lights like a waxed turnip. That furry thing he was stepping on must be his wig.
“Stand up and explain yourself, Miss Cates,” he barked.
With pleasure. She yanked the toupee out from under his foot, making him stumble a little, and got to her feet.
Choking back the laughter, she schooled her face into the blandest expression she could manage and handed him the object, held fastidiously between thumb and forefinger. “I believe this is yours, sir.”
He looked at the wig, then up at her, the veins in his forehead bulging. Snatching it from her hand without a word, he turned and stalked out of the department. The workmen burst into a chorus of snickering as he passed by and she couldn’t help but laugh, too.
Oh, Lord, she’d probably lose her job over this one. Then the laughter died in her throat as reality came crashing back in on a sudden wave of anxiety. Right now, her job was the least of her worries.
* * *
MICHAEL CALLED that evening to tell her that Colin was back home after staying with a friend. He was going to try and talk to his son, now that Colin had had some breathing space.
All day Tuesday there was no sign of Michael at work. By evening she couldn’t stand it any longer and went up to the executive suite. The reception area was empty, but his door stood open. She walked in to see Colin dropping some papers on his father’s desk. He would have brushed right past, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Please, don’t leave. We need to talk.”
He refused to turn and look at her. “I really have to get going. I’ve got stacks of homework to do.”
“You can’t keep avoiding me forever.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about.”
This frigid rejection was unbearable. “Don’t cut me out. We’ve been such good friends. I know I hurt you but—”
“I made a fool of myself.” He stood rigid, his voice stiff and formal. “There’s no need to remind me of it. I really don’t want to discuss it.”
It broke her heart to see him like this, a hurt boy trying desperately hard for adult dignity.
“But I do. I need to get a few things off my chest.”
“Why? To ease your conscience?” He finally shifted his gaze to meet hers. The disillusion filling his eyes cut her like a knife. “Okay, go ahead.”
“I never meant to hurt you, because I love you. I’ve always loved you as a very special friend. I thought you would outgrow your feelings for me.”
A spasm of pain passed over his face. “I tried to tell you how I felt, but you just laughed me off. I was just a dumb kid. Well, I’m not a dumb kid, Sabrina. Everybody grows up sooner or later. I’ve grown up, too. You just didn’t want to see it. You said you were my friend. You said you cared, but you never... I was just a nuisance to you, wasn’t I?”
“That’s not true.”
He shook his head bitterly. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to figure it out about you and Michael? Were you going to keep it a secret, or didn’t I count in your future plans at all? You know, Sabrina, you taught me a valuable lesson about relationships, about life.”
“You’re seventeen years old for heaven’s sake! Ten years from now you’ll be thinking back on all this and wondering how you could ever—”
“No, I won’t!” The words exploded out of him, then he lowered his voice. “I’m not like you, Sabrina. And I’m not like Michael. I’m me.”
She fell silent for a moment. He was right. Neither she nor his father had the power to tell him how to feel. Things had changed between them, never to be the same again.
“I feel totally responsible for everything that’s happened.” She swallowed hard over the lump in her throat. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
“No!”
Michael stepped in through the doorway and saw Sabrina and Colin turn sharply at the sound of his voice. Sabrina looked distraught, her eyes filled with tears. He wanted to go to her, put his arms around her, comfort her, but now was not the time. Colin needed him more, in spite of the cold anger in his son’s face that pierced his heart like a knife.
“No,” he repeated. “If anybody should take the blame, it should be me.”
He stepped toward his son, but the boy moved back from him, distrusting, and gave a mirthless laugh.
“It’s funny, the two of you both so anxious to assume responsibility. As far as I’m concerned, you can both go to hell. I’m sick of you trying to make me believe that you care about me.”
Hopelessness and desperation made a tight hard lump in Michael’s chest. How could he get this boy to understand?
He swallowed hard. “What can I do to convince you that I love you and I always have, and everything I ever did was motivated by your needs?”
Colin gave a snort of disbelief.
“I know it makes no sense to you,” Michael continued, “but it’s the truth.”
“The truth is that you did the easiest thing for yourself.”
He wasn’t getting through. Michael squeezed his hand into a fist and felt the fast painful thudding of his heart against his ribs. Somewhere inside, cold black fear overwhelmed him. This could be the last chance he’d ever get to reach his son.
He took a deep, unsteady breath. “You have to understand, I was not much older than you are now. I barely had the means to support you....” Colin groaned and half turned away. “...And you needed me.”
“And you resented me.” Colin rounded on him again, angry and accusatory.
“Resented you? No. Scared to death? Yes. What did I know about babies? For that matter, what did I know about life?”
He paused, praying that his son would meet his eyes, wanting to make him see how it had been. He didn’t expect forgiveness or exoneration. He’d been wrong. But he desperately needed his son to understand why he did what he did.
“So am I supposed to feel sorry for you now?”
Michael felt the dull chill of defeat settle over him and gave a slow painful shake of his head. “I’m not saying for a moment that I didn’t do wrong. I made some terrible mistakes where you were concerned, but you have to understand that I made them out of love for you, not because I didn’t care.”
“Okay, fine. I can understand that when I was a baby. But later...”
“When you were four I wanted you to come and live with me, but I let your grandmother convince me that it would be cruel to take you away from the only home you’d ever known. Better to wait till you were a little older, she said.”
“Are you trying to tell me she deliberately kept us apart?” Colin glared at hi
m in disgust, as if Michael were trying any low tactic to win his point. “She knew how much I wanted you. I used to cry for you.” His voice hardened in accusation. “But Grandma told me you were too busy, you wouldn’t want to be saddled with a kid....”
Sabrina sucked in her breath in shocked disbelief.
Michael’s eyes burned with pain and anger. “That’s not true!” His voice broke as he repeated, “That’s not true.”
She knew the man that she loved. He was too honorable to get himself off the hook by exposing his mother as a cruel liar, and he loved his son too much to inflict even more hurt. Aching with pride and love for Michael, she felt impotent, desperate to ease his pain, but knowing there was nothing she could do.
“I never knew you cried for me. I never guessed,” Michael said huskily. “You resented me so much.”
“And I suppose you blamed me?”
Michael shook his head slowly. “No, I never blamed you. I blamed myself.”
Suddenly the adult hardness vanished from Colin’s face. He looked like a lost little boy as his lips compressed and tears filled his eyes. Michael began to move toward him, but Colin swiftly shook his head and held up a hand to ward him off. Michael stopped in his tracks.
Across the space of three feet, father and son stared at each other. Sabrina felt a lump in her throat. It might as well be the deepest chasm or the width of an ocean. Here in this room stood the two people she loved most in this world, her every hope for happiness, and now she was watching it all crumble into dust.
“Is there nothing I can do or say that would make this up to you?”
“No, nothing.” With a strangled sob, Colin brushed past him and left the room.
Michael stood for a long, still moment, then slowly walked toward his desk, pain and anger and futility etching every line of his handsome face. Suddenly he picked up the file lying on the desktop, turned with savage fury and hurled it against the wall.
As the scattered papers fluttered to the floor, he leaned on the desk and sank his forehead onto his hand, looking so utterly defeated that Sabrina couldn’t bear it.
“I never asked her for her love,” his hollow voice expressionless, every vestige of emotion drained out of him, “because I knew from my earliest childhood that she had none to give me. But I didn’t deserve her hate.”
It was the ugliest thing she had ever heard. “She was your mother! How could she not love her child?”
“She couldn’t love anyone. Maybe it had something to do with my grandfather’s suicide—I never fully understood—but Sybil thought emotional ties made you weak and vulnerable. And for a Worth, nothing could be worse. She made sure I never formed any as a child. As soon as I became attached to a nanny, she would be replaced.”
“But what about your father? What did he have to say about all of this?”
“I didn’t know my father. He died when I was two. And when I asked about him, Sybil told me he was an old man when she married him. She needed money and Worth’s needed an heir. She didn’t leave me with too many illusions. She didn’t even give me his name. I was a Worth, and nothing else mattered. She used him like she used everyone else, and she wanted to turn me into someone just like her.”
“But you’re not.” She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, laying her cheek against the fine navy wool covering his back.
Michael expelled a heavy breath and turned to wrap his arms around her. She could feel him trembling as he buried his face in her hair, holding her so tightly, she could barely breathe. But she didn’t mind. How desperately she wished she could absorb his pain. Why couldn’t they just forget who they were? Find themselves far away, without a past, and just go on together.
He spoke against her hair. “I’ve decided I’m going to take Colin away for a holiday. Just him and I. I made the arrangements this morning.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Michael.” But she knew what she had to do, and gently pushed herself away from him. “You have to keep on trying with Colin. You can’t give up.” He nodded in agreement. She swallowed hard and continued. “But I think that to make things easier, I have to leave.”
For a moment he was completely still, hardly breathing, as he looked at her with a blank expression in his eyes; then she saw the horror dawn on his face. “No!” The word tore out of him and his lean fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arms so tightly, she knew they’d be bruised. “No. What are you saying?”
“What about Colin?”
His soothing hands stroked over her back. “We’ll talk to him. Everything will work out.”
“There’s no guarantee of a happy-ever-after ending. This isn’t a fairy tale. It doesn’t have to work out.”
For a moment he said nothing; then she felt him stiffen and clutch her to him even more tightly.
“Sabrina, what are we saying? How can we contemplate sacrificing our happiness like this? Let’s just get married. Things will have to work out.”
Her voice emerged thick and husky with unshed tears. “We can’t start our marriage like that. What if Colin never comes around? How happy can we be, knowing we’ve estranged your son for life?”
“I can’t let you leave.” His eyes filled with a wild mixture of fear and pain.
But there was no other way, and he knew it, too. She felt the tears perilously close, but fought them back ferociously. She had to be calm. And she had to be strong.
“I’ve been thinking it over and we have no other choice. My being here will only complicate things between you and Colin.”
“But what will you do? Where will you go?”
She hadn’t even given it a thought. If she didn’t have Michael, it didn’t matter. But she didn’t want him worrying about her. “Don’t you think I could get myself another job?” she asked, rallying a smile. “As a matter of fact, the competition’s been after me for years, trying to get me over to their side.” The desperate try for humor failed miserably.
“Whatever I can do to help—”
She quickly cut him off. “Don’t worry about me, Michael. I’ll be fine.”
He was gripping her arms so tightly, they were aching now. He didn’t want to let her go, but she could see in his eyes that he knew there was no other way. “Sabrina...”
There was so much longing and desperation in that one word it almost tore her apart. “You know I’m right, Michael. You know it’s the only way.” Despite her effort to fight them back, the tears spilled over onto her cheeks—silent, slow and hot. “You two go away and get things sorted out. Then, when you come back...”
“When we come back I’m going to come looking for you.”
She nodded. If you still want me. If you still need me.
His grip relaxed on her arms, but he began caressing her flesh gently with his fingers, as if he couldn’t bear to break the contact.
“When will you go?” His voice cracked, raw and husky with emotion.
“After the parade. I’ll leave then.” She wiped at the warm, salty tears that had found their way to the corners of her mouth.
He took a deep breath and straightened, seeming to rally a little. “I’m not giving up on us, Sabrina. You said yourself that Colin will come around, and when he does, I’m coming after you,” he said fiercely. “Will you wait for me?”
She stared up and saw the despair and hope in his eyes, loving him with all her heart and soul. “Forever,” she whispered.
But she felt a deep shudder of foreboding. It could very well be forever. But there would never be anyone else for her. She loved Michael. Time and distance could never change that.
He took her into his arms and she clung to him. His eyes traced her features, as if he wanted to commit them to memory. Then, with a small anguished sound he lowered his head to kiss her.
For a few blissful moments she allowed her lips to cling to his, helpless to stop the silent tears from pouring down her face. She could taste them on her lips as she forced herself to pull away from him, from the a
nguish in his eyes that mirrored the pain in her heart.
She turned blindly away. He still held on to her hand as it slid through his, and she knew they could both hardly bear to break that last contact. Fingertips grazed, holding for a second, and then she turned and left him behind.
* * *
LIFE BECAME REDUCED to an endless tunnel of misery. As she counted down the hours until the parade, Sabrina almost thanked God for the twelve-hour days that kept her running, solving one last-minute crisis after another.
But the nights were terrible, long dark sleepless hours of trying not to think about Michael. Trying to forget how he looked those few times she had caught sight of him in the store. He never smiled anymore. All the joy had gone out of his life. She could see it in his drawn face. He looked older, the lines beside his mouth etched a little deeper.
Now, too late, she finally understood the depth and source of the loneliness that haunted him. His mother had been incapable of love, his son resented him and his wife had used him. How could a man live that kind of life and be expected to know about love?
And yet he had an abundance of love inside him to give, and she felt proud that he had chosen to give it to her. But now, circumstances were forcing her to repeat the loveless pattern of his life. She, too, had to push him away. If she didn’t love him so much, she’d never be able to do it. But knowing that she was doing it for him didn’t stop her heart from breaking.
In the midst of all her misery, she had one thing to be grateful for. After a battery of tests, the doctors had let Charlie go home. But despite his clean bill of health, there was no way he could be Santa this year, and she found an ally in his daughter Marie. Although he’d apparently made a complete recovery, they both feared the excitement would be too taxing for him.
She wouldn’t endanger her dearest friend, even if he was the only Santa Claus she could ever imagine. So she’d asked George from the seniors’ center to fill in, having forgiven him for the fiasco of the protest.
And now finally the day was here, after all the months of planning and hard work. The first Saturday in November dawned cold and gray, threatening snow from low, fast-moving clouds. By one o’clock in the afternoon, she was standing on the pavement in front of the store, watching the floats come in.
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