by Stuart, Anne
But he also knew he wouldn’t have her for long, not if he got to her on anything less than optimum conditions. It didn’t matter that he had no idea just how long he wanted—that was all lost somewhere in the hazy future. He only knew one thing. She needed to come to him; she needed to accept that she wanted him. The only way for her to realize that was for him to be devious, manipulative and downright sneaky, something he found surprisingly entertaining.
It was almost time now. He’d been distant, as charming as he knew how to be and out of reach for more than a week. When they were in the same room he’d move just close enough to invade her space, to make her physically aware of him, and then he’d retreat before she could complain. But he could see from the confused, frustrated expression in those wonderful brown eyes of hers that it was working.
The weekend was coming up and it was time to make his move. He’d have to be subtle. He didn’t want to blow all his hard work and deprivation. Maybe he could deliberately slide off the road just past her driveway. What it lacked in inventiveness it made up for in believability.
Or he could get the Muller sisters to invite them both to tea. They needed no encouragement to matchmake and they’d taken a fancy to him. There was nothing they’d like better than to cook something up between him and Sybil.
Or maybe, just maybe, he could stop by with some of his notes, ask her for clarification on Perley Johnson’s history, for instance, or Lester Maclntire’s success ratio. Then he could casually ask her out to dinner, woo her with diffident charm and have his wicked way with her when she asked him in for a nightcap.
He liked that last option the best, probably because it involved a more immediate gratification. He could even set it up ahead of time, mention that he might stop by so she wouldn’t get too suspicious when he showed up at her doorstep. Maybe he wouldn’t even wait till Saturday.
He heard with disbelief the unmistakable sounds of Sybil locking up. He checked the thin Rolex on his wrist, just to make sure it really was only three o’clock. Sybil never closed up before five, no matter how bad the weather, and while it was a gray, windy day, for once no snow was falling. Maybe she was sick. He hadn’t heard any sniffling or sneezing or rushing to the bathroom at frequent intervals, but that was no proof. Maybe she needed a ride home and someone to tuck a quilt around her and feed her savage dogs and ply her with chicken soup.
He slammed the book shut, choked on the cloud of dust that wafted into his face and forced himself to head downstairs at a leisurely pace. He’d pretend he hadn’t heard her locking up, pretend he was just coming down for coffee.
“There you are.” Sybil was standing in the hallway, and he noticed what he hadn’t noticed before. She wasn’t wearing her usual corduroys and denims and shapeless sweaters. She was wearing a dress, probably silk, of a pale rose color that did wonders for her coloring and wonders for the body he knew existed beneath the bulky clothes. She had breasts—not too big, not too small—round, luscious hips and a small enough waist to set off both those attributes. She’d even fixed her hair into a loose sort of bun and it framed her small, solemn face. He controlled himself with a strong effort.
He looked down at her feet, shod in neat little leather pumps, at the suitcase beside her, at the cloth coat over her arm and then back up to her face. “You’re going somewhere?”
She sighed, and for once something else was overshadowing her reaction toward him. “I’m visiting my parents in New Jersey. I can’t make it at Christmastime so we’re celebrating early.”
“Why can’t you make it at Christmastime?” Stupid question, he chided himself. Until he saw the flush that warmed her pale skin.
“Because I don’t want to. Besides, Dulcy usually goes up to Canada to visit an aunt and I can’t count on her to watch the dogs then. So my family gets me now or not at all.”
“You don’t like your family?”
“Of course I do!” she snapped.
“Well, then, why don’t you sound happier about going?”
She took a deep breath. “Because my family, much as I love them, are overbearing, interfering and more than I can handle. Just like you.”
He grinned. “Does that mean you love me?”
She looked horrified. “That means I wish there was some place I could go where I didn’t have to deal with any of you,” she snapped, but she sounded more weary than combative. “I’ll be back next Wednesday. There’s a key on my desk, so you can come and go as you please. Leona’s going to fill in for me—try not to harass her, okay?”
“Leona’s back?”
“She will be tomorrow. I assume you’ve gotten over your absurd suspicions.”
Nick smiled his most angelic smile. “What do you think?”
“I think Leona’s more than a match for you,” she said. She was pulling on her coat, covering that lovely little body of hers. “Try to behave yourself, Nick,” she added.
He couldn’t resist, even if it meant blowing all his hard work of ignoring her. He slid one arm around her waist, under her coat, and pulled her against him. He caught her chin with his other hand, turning her startled face up to his. “I just want to see if the potion’s still working,” he murmured, and set his mouth on hers.
Her response was gratifyingly instantaneous. Her hands clutched his shoulders, her head tilted back and her mouth opened beneath his with only the slightest pressure. Suddenly he felt slightly desperate. He lost himself into the warm dark hollow of her mouth, and her own tongue met his, sliding against his, flirting with him, as her breasts seemed to swell and press against his chest. Her fingers tightened, and he heard a tiny little moan deep in the back of her throat. A moan of wanting, a moan of surrender. He wondered for one brief moment whether he could carry her up those stairs to the uncomfortable couch in the library. Maybe the table would be a better surface.
Then she began to withdraw and he knew better than to hold her against her will. Even as his mind howled a protest, his mouth left her and his arms released her, and they were standing inches apart, breathless, staring into each other’s eyes.
Her mouth was slightly swollen, he noticed, and her nipples were hard beneath the silk dress, hard despite the warmth of the hallway. Her eyes were dazed and hostile.
“It didn’t work then,” she said, “and it doesn’t work now.”
For a moment he couldn’t remember what she was talking about, and then he remembered. A slow grin lit his face. “What doesn’t work? The love potion or the kiss?”
“Both.”
“Liar.”
She took a deep breath. He noticed her thick, silky hair was falling out of that bun she wore, and for the hundredth time he wondered how that hair would look spread out beneath him.
“Goodbye, Nick,” she said evenly, picking up her suitcase and moving past him toward the door.
He watched her go, forcing himself to remain motionless, even as her silk dress brushed against his thigh and the faint whisper of her flowery scent danced in his nostrils. “Hurry back,” he said.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell.” She slammed the door behind her, the last of her calm deserting her.
He leaned against the panes of glass that surrounded the door, staring out into the gathering shadows of the December afternoon. He watched the Subaru peel out into the road, watched her drive away. A gust of wind blasted between the cracks in the old wooden door.
Nick shivered. “Honey,” he said out loud, “it already is.”
Chapter Twelve
SYBIL HAD HAD worse visits in her family’s house on Hodge Road. Growing up there had been sheer torment, always overshadowed by her three sisters and her parents, always feeling like a changeling. If it weren’t for the fact that she looked exactly like her father’s mother, she might have thought venerable old Princeton Medical Center had made a mistake and switched babies. Maybe
the real Saralee Richardson was a world famous doctor or an actress or the president of NOW. A real Richardson wouldn’t be happily buried in the north woods, running a tiny little occult bookstore and working as a part-time secretary for a bunch of kooks.
No one said anything, of course. Their questions, their expressions of kindly interest were so well done that anyone outside the family would have been fooled into thinking they really cared, that they really respected the way she had chosen to live her life. But she knew them too well. She intercepted the meaningful glances that passed between her parents and her sisters, heard the vague explanations of her lifestyle to family friends, and she wasn’t fooled for a moment.
It would have been so much easier, she thought, sitting alone in the bedroom that had been left just as she had always kept it, if she didn’t love them and they didn’t love her. But she did and they did. She was loved just as much as her more glorious sisters. She just wasn’t one of them.
She stared around her room, at the looming posts of her canopy bed. Her parents had bought it for her one Christmas when she was twelve. She’d longed for it, begged for it, and when Christmas morning rolled around she’d received a photograph of it with the promise of delivery in one week. While a photograph wasn’t as exciting as the real thing, she’d been overjoyed. Until she watched her sisters opening their big presents.
Hattie was eighteen, already fascinated by medicine. Her parents gave her a skeleton with all the bones named and numbered, and Hattie was entranced. Emmie got a set of law books, and was ecstatic. And baby Allison, two years younger than Sybil, got the oak file cabinet and laptop she’d been begging for.
Sybil had hated that bed from then on. She’d never said a word, she’d slept in it for six years until she left for college, she slept in it every time she came back. She stayed amid the pink chintzes her mother had chosen, chintzes that made her look like a brown elf, and she looked at the dolls lining the shelves, dolls her sisters had discarded by the time they reached third grade, and she never said a word. If she couldn’t be glorious, at least she could be pleasant.
She’d already unplugged the small, fresh Christmas tree her mother had put in her room. Pamela Richardson had a gift for decorating-each Christmas her house was a tasteful showcase of antique ornaments, fragrant greenery, fresh flowers, and some holiday theme that changed every year. There was the time when Sybil had been in her teens, troubled by baby fat, and her mother had put designer gingerbread houses in every room. She’d had to cancel her lavish open house that year—Sybil had eaten little pieces off of every single house, and it looked as if mice had gotten into them.
Or the year with the snow globes when she’d broken three of them. The fantasia of angels that she’d knocked over to a horrifying domino effect, or the time her mother decided to use real candles on the tree and Sybil’s fussy, flouncy dress, the one that she’d begged for, the one that would have been perfect on any of her three sisters but made her look like a contestant in a toddler’s beauty contest. And things had gone downhill from there.
She was just as glad she wouldn’t have to be there when they opened their presents. Despite their cries of appreciation, she always had the suspicion that they were being just a little too happy about the Vermont maple syrup, the handwoven blankets, the thick quilts, the wooden sap buckets and the homemade blackberry jam.
As usual, her parents tried to give her a new car, and as usual she refused. Another excuse for not visiting more often was the age of her Subaru, and while its replacement with an all-wheel-drive Audi was tempting, she resisted. If she really wanted one, she could afford to buy one herself—her trust fund just sat and increased. But she valued her excuses more than a new car, and she resisted the latest offering with only a small twinge.
She had flown down on Wednesday, it was now Saturday evening, and she only had three more days to go, she thought, counting them off on her fingers. She’d make it—nothing horrendous had happened so far. The only bad thing about the visit was Nick.
Her dreams had only gotten worse. It was no wonder, considering that kiss he’d planted on her just before she left. She’d driven the two hours to the airport, alternately fuming and dreaming. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe, despite Nick’s many irritating qualities and beliefs, there was nothing wrong in getting involved with the hottest, most irritating man she’d met in a long time.
After all, sex hadn’t even interested her for years. Part of it was Colin’s fault—his lovemaking was polite, energetic and boring. Part of it was the lack of men around Danbury—the closest she got to a possibility was Dulcy’s younger brother and, at age fourteen, he was just a tiny bit too young for her. No matter what his other drawbacks, Nick Fitzsimmons was a devastatingly attractive, dangerously sexy man, and she should be pleased that she was healthy and broad-minded enough to notice.
Except that she was doing more than notice, she was being sorely tempted. Ever since she’d had that double dose of love philtre, it had simply gotten worse and worse. Even his distance during the days before she left hadn’t helped. Even being four hundred miles away in the bosom of her distinctly uncomfortable family didn’t help. Nothing helped; the attraction grew whether he was there to feed it or not. She had the uneasy suspicion that the next time he kissed her she was going to kiss him back.
Except that you already have, you stupid idiot, she chided herself. The next time she was going to do more than kiss him back, she was going to jump his bones. Maybe giving in to temptation would get him off her mind.
And maybe she really was as big an idiot as she’d always suspected, even to consider such an outlandish idea. She rose from the oversize chair, built more for tall men and women than for someone of her delicate stature, and flicked on the light. The closer she got to Nick Fitzsimmons the worse it got. He certainly wasn’t the type she wanted to spend any meaningful time with, even if he happened to be insane enough to want it. He was too much like the rest of her family—too tall, too handsome, too talented, too bright. What he lacked in Richardson charm he made up for in wit. What she needed was a short, stocky hunk.
She could hear the noise from downstairs, hear the clink of ice and glasses, the sound of laughter and bright conversation. Her mother had told her it was a small pre-Christmas cocktail party, only about fifty guests. Every one of those fifty would make her feel inadequate, despite the turquoise silk dress that Hattie, with her excellent eye for clothing, had chosen for her. At least Allison was planning an announcement. She’d been very secretive about it, but they all knew she’d been seeing someone in Washington. Someone important, it was whispered. One more Richardson would make a wonderful marriage.
Of course, Sybil thought as she wandered down the hallway, her own marriage had been a Richardson one. Colin had started his own law firm at thirty-two, been named to governor’s commissions, been quoted in Newsweek and had letters published in The New York Times. Her wedding day, with the four hundred and seventy-five invited guests, was one of the only times she had felt like a real Richardson. She had also felt absolutely miserable.
Well, she’d done her duty, stayed in the marriage far longer than it or Colin had deserved and now was free. It was up to Allison to do it right this time.
“Chin up, Sybil,” she ordered herself softly as she descended the stairs. “It can’t be as bad as you’re expecting.”
“Saralee!” Allison stood poised at the bottom of the stairs, and a tall, handsome, strangely familiar man stood directly behind her, one strong hand clasping her shoulder in a possessive gesture. “Come meet your future brother-in-law.”
Sybil reached the bottom of the stairs, plastered a suitable smile on her face and looked up. Directly into Geoffrey Van der Sling’s beautiful blue eyes, eyes that didn’t, for even one moment, recognize her.
“I THINK YOU’RE crazy to fly back into a storm,” Emmie said, casting her sister a worried glance the n
ext day as they sped along the New Jersey Turnpike toward Newark Airport. “You don’t even know if they’ll let you on the plane, much less know if any are flying out.”
“The weather is fine,” Sybil said, huddled in the passenger seat of Emmie’s Mercedes. “Just a little cloudy and overcast. We should have no trouble taking off.”
“But there’s a blizzard in Vermont!”
“No, there’s not. Just some heavy snowfall. And the plane I booked has to stop at Logan on the way up, and even flying standby I should still be fine. By the time we get to Burlington, the snow will have stopped and the roads will be clear. If not, I can always spend the night in a hotel and drive to Danbury tomorrow.”
“Why don’t we turn around and go back to Princeton and you can fly out tomorrow? Better yet, stay till Tuesday when you planned to leave anyway. Why do you have to go back so early? Surely your dogs will be fine.”
“I told you, Annie just gave birth to seven puppies,” she lied blithely. “I can’t leave them with Dulcy.”
“I don’t believe you,” Emmie said.
Sybil looked over at her sister, at the pregnant belly pushing against the leather-covered steering wheel, the mane of gorgeous, naturally blond hair, the concerned blue eyes. Emmie had always been the one she could talk to, the one who understood what it felt like to be a. changeling.
Sybil opened her mouth to lie again, then shut it. “You’re right.”
“You want to tell me what the problem is? It was something that happened last night, I know that much.”