“What do you know about my life in Vancouver?” she asked, a stillness draping over her like a cold, wet cloak.
“More than I care to,” he shot back. “I’ve known for days that your flower shop’s been closed down and you’re under suspicion of fraud and conspiracy. Now I learn your business cohort has links with organized crime. Nice company you keep, Lily! Just the kind of people Hugo and my mother would love to invite into their home and include in their social circle! What I don’t know is when you were going to share all these sordid facts with the family you claim is so important to you.”
Shock rendered her temporarily speechless. Staggering slightly, she steadied herself against the back of the couch and finally said, “Never, if I could help it! I’m not proud of having been so gullible and stupid.”
“But not so ashamed that you stayed out of our lives!”
“I didn’t say I was ashamed. I’m not! I don’t know where you got your information, but if you’d—”
“I’m a lawyer, in case you’ve forgotten. I know how to dig up dirt on people. All it took was a phone call to the right party to set things in motion.”
“You hired a private detective to spy on me?” she whispered, all the lovely warm certainty that, with him, she’d found her soul mate, shriveling up and dying.
“That’s putting it a little fancifully, but it more or less fits the description. I had your background investigated.”
“When?”
“Within days of your getting here, but it’s been an ongoing project.” He strode to the desk and tried to shove a sheet of paper into her hand. “I received the latest report just this afternoon. Read it for yourself.”
“I don’t care to!” She slapped it aside, furious, dismayed and, most of all, deeply hurt. She’d been willing to trust this man with her heart! For her to discover now that, all the time he was seducing her so expertly, he’d had another agenda…!
She felt as if she’d been hit, hard. She felt battered and bruised and torn to shreds inside. “Do you know why I came here tonight?” she said, in a low, broken voice. “Because I wanted to tell you that I love you. Because I thought you were going to say the same thing to me.”
“The idea had crossed my mind.” He looked as haggard as she felt. “I guess it just goes to show what self-delusional fools we can be sometimes.”
“I trusted you!”
“I wish I could say the same about you.”
“You could. Can! If you’d just asked me, instead of—”
“Every day that passed, I waited for you to say something. Hoped you’d have the decency to come clean and tell me the kind of trouble you’re in. Hoped the next report I received would clear your name. But you remained silent, and the investigator kept turning up more dirt, culminating in today’s report. Sorry, Lily, but that doesn’t exactly inspire trust.”
She could have pleaded her case. But why waste her time?
“I won’t bother trying to justify my actions,” she said, holding her head high. “You’ve already judged and found me guilty. I’m sure you’d find my protestations of innocence laughable.”
“The evidence against you is pretty conclusive. You can hardly blame me for being concerned.”
“There is no evidence against me!” she spat. “Or if there is, it’s entirely circumstantial, a concept you appear to have dismissed out of hand. But from where I stand, there’s certainly plenty against you.”
“Oh, really?” He sneered, supremely confident of his superiority, his unimpeachable moral fiber. Clearly it had never occurred to him the rest of the world might view him as just a little less than perfect. “Such as what?”
“You’re not the man I took you to be, Sebastian Caine, and I am so glad you showed your true colors before I made an even bigger fool of myself than I already have. You’ve been determined to discredit me from the minute you set eyes on me. As for your righteous indignation about my sins of omission, you could certainly give me lessons in underhandedness!”
He looked vaguely disturbed by her vehemence. “Hey,” he said, spreading his hands palms up, as if he were the most reasonable creature on earth, and she nothing but a woman in the throes of PMS or some other kind of hormonal imbalance, “if there’s something I’ve missed in all this, fill me in. Defend yourself. I’m willing to listen. I always have been.”
“Why waste my breath? You’ve already got enough ammunition to condemn me out of hand. I’m able to spend unlimited time here because I don’t have a job waiting for me in Vancouver. Why? Because the police closed down my business. And why was that, you ask? Because it was a cover-up for organized crime, which naturally makes me some sort of Mafia gun moll. So why did I show up here? Because Daddy’s rich as well as good-looking, and so full of guilt at having abandoned me that touching him up for money to bail myself out of my current mess will be a piece of cake for an experienced crook like me.”
Running out of steam, she pressed a hand to her chest and drew in a fresh lungful of air. “Good grief, Sebastian, how much more proof do you need that you’ve jumped to all the right conclusions?”
“Just hold your fire a second,” he said, advancing toward her. “Something here doesn’t—”
“No! I’ve heard enough. More than enough! You want me out of your life? You’ve got it! I’m gone! You’ll never have to breathe the same air as me again. As far as I’m concerned, Sebastian Caine, you’re history that’s well on the way to being permanently forgotten. But just so there’s no misunderstanding, I’m not giving up on Natalie or Hugo. They’re all the family I’ve got left, and I’ll see you in hell before I let you shove me out of their lives, as well.”
Seeing him winding up to argue the point, she spun on her high heels and took off down the narrow, winding stairs with dangerous disregard for her safety. She’d rather have broken her neck than give him the chance to have the last word.
“Tomorrow,” she promised herself, sprinting as best she could through the shrubbery and across the lawns to the main house, “I’ll be on the first flight out of here, if I have to charter a private jet to do it. I’ll gather enough proof to show him just how far off the mark he is with his nasty suspicions! Before I’m done with him, he’ll wind up with so much egg on his face that no one will recognize him!”
Hugo hauled him on the carpet the next afternoon. Or, more accurately, he showed up at the law firm, something he hadn’t done in months, and after being admitted to Sebastian’s office, closed the door behind him with a quiet precision that broadcast his displeasure loud and clear.
“Lily left town this morning,” he began, without preamble. “And it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was very upset. You told her, didn’t you? Against my express wishes, you told her the truth about her mother.”
Sebastian held him with too much respect and affection to take the easy way out. “Yes, I did. Quite a long time ago. That’s not why she’s gone, but you’re right in assuming I’m responsible for her leaving.” He looked his stepfather straight in the eye. “I initiated an investigation into her past, also against your express wishes, and she found out about it.”
Hugo sagged in his chair, suddenly looking all of his seventy years. “Why, Sebastian? By what right did you take it upon yourself to invade her privacy like that?”
He’d asked himself the same question a thousand times since she’d stormed out of his apartment. “Damned if I really know,” he said. “In the beginning, I suppose I was looking out for you, protecting you. You were so trusting, so ready to take her at face value. I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to wind up being hurt, that she wasn’t a chip off the old block, out to take advantage of you. At first, all I intended was to confirm she was who and what she claimed to be, but it got out of hand….” He heaved a sigh. “Stuff turned up that put her in a pretty bad light and I felt I had to keep going. If it makes any difference, Hugo, I was hoping my source would unearth something that would clear her.”
“Damn it,
Sebastian!” Hugo was white around the mouth, his eyes blazing. Normally a man of temperate nature, he was formidable when roused to anger. Sebastian could count on one hand the number of times he’d witnessed it. “I’ve been in the legal profession a long time and I consider myself a pretty sound judge of people. I don’t need proof of Lily’s good character. But I am beyond disappointed in you.”
Sebastian pushed away from the desk and paced across the carpet. “I’m pretty disappointed in me, too. During our last conversation, I told her I didn’t trust her, but the truth is, I don’t trust myself around her. She clouds my judgment, Hugo. She makes all the boundaries marking my life shift out of focus. I pride myself on being a man willing to be held accountable for his actions, yet where she’s concerned, I break all the rules that normally govern my conduct.”
“Are you telling me you think you’re in love with her?” Hugo swiveled in his chair and subjected him to a disconcertingly probing gaze.
Jeez, if that were his only sin! But he’d had to compound his errors by making love to her. He’d had sex with his stepfather’s daughter, for God’s sake! What kind of jerk was he that, even now, visions of her lying hot and naked beneath him colored his mind and evoked the taste and scent of her with startling clarity?
“I think,” he said, choosing his words carefully because, for the first time ever, he couldn’t be completely honest with the man who’d guided him into manhood with unwavering dedication, “that any such possibility was nipped in the bud last night.”
“So that’s it, then.” Wearily Hugo got to his feet. “I had hoped our perfect summer might last indefinitely. Instead both my daughters are flying the coop.”
“Both?”
“Natalie leaves for India at the end of next week.”
“I can’t believe you’ve agreed to letting her go. Hugo, I really don’t think that’s a smart idea.”
“You’ll forgive me, Sebastian,” came the reply, “if I don’t hold your opinion in much regard right now. You chose to interfere in my relationship with Lily. I’m not disposed to let you do the same where Natalie’s concerned. Your mother and I both feel this is an opportunity unlikely to come her way again and are encouraging her to take full advantage of it.”
The silence he left behind rang with recrimination. I’ve screwed up, Sebastian thought gloomily. And I’ve done it in spectacular fashion.
The question was, how could he redeem himself, not only in Hugo’s eyes, but, more importantly, in his own?
CHAPTER TEN
HE KNEW the answer, of course. And if he hadn’t been able to figure it out for himself, the final investigative report arriving on his desk five days later spelled out in conclusive detail the extent to which he’d misjudged Lily. No question about it: he was going to have to swallow all his pride, not just selected parts.
He waited until Natalie was safely en route to her adventure and he’d cleared his desk of his most urgent cases before telling his mother and Hugo of his plans. “I’m flying out to B.C. next week. I could phone, and save myself the time and trouble of making the trip, but I figure I owe it to Lily to deliver my apology in person. I’m booked into the Hotel Vancouver if you need to reach me.”
“How long will you be gone?” Cynthia asked.
“As long as it takes.” He looked at Hugo. “I don’t really expect her to forgive me, but I hope, in time, you can.”
“I’ve looked on you as a son for a good number of years, Sebastian,” Hugo said. “It’ll take more than one mistake on your part for that to change.”
He should have found the words comforting but, as he left his mother and stepfather standing on the terrace, he felt only ashamed and strangely uneasy. Suddenly they both looked old and very alone.
He was not a man given to superstition, yet the apprehension stayed with him all during the long flight west the next day. He hoped Lily would agree to see him that night, that he could persuade her to return with him to Stentonbridge as soon as possible, and spend what remained of the summer with her family.
He didn’t phone ahead to warn her of his visit, figuring he’d be better off taking her by surprise. The way he saw it, that was probably his only chance of getting her to open her door to him.
She lived on the top floor of a fourteen story apartment building overlooking English Bay. It was growing dark when he arrived, and not much was left of the sunset but an orange glow behind the mountains on the far side of Georgia Strait.
He stationed himself in an inconspicuous spot among the potted palms screening the foyer from the street, certain he wouldn’t have long to wait before someone opened the main entrance and he could slip inside the building.
What he hadn’t counted on was that that person would be Lily. She came running up the steps from the street not five minutes later, with a sack of groceries swinging from her hand and what looked like a French baguette in a bag tucked under her arm.
She had no idea she was being watched, no sense that he was right behind her, until he touched her on the shoulder as she juggled her purchases and tried to fit her key into the lock. He thought he was prepared for her possible reaction at seeing him again—anything from her slamming his foot in the door to trying to shove him down the nearest stairwell. But her subdued shriek of alarm and the way the groceries flew out of her hand and hit the ground with a resounding thwack startled him almost as much as he’d obviously startled her.
“Hey,” he said, patting her soothingly, “it’s just me.”
“Just you?” she echoed faintly, clutching the French bread to her bosom and turning huge, fear-filled eyes on him. “That makes it even worse than what I originally expected. What are you doing here, lurking in the bushes like some pervert?”
“Waiting to talk to you. Are you going to invite me upstairs, or shall we sit on the steps out here?”
“Neither,” she said. “And stop patting me as if you were trying to placate a vicious dog.”
“Nervous, perhaps, but never vicious,” he said ruefully, unable to take his eyes off her. Agitation stained her cheeks a rosy pink and left her breasts heaving delectably under her lightweight summer dress. Swallowing, he bent down and stuffed a carton of peach ice cream, a bag of frozen French fries, a king-size bottle of ketchup, and a box of chocolate-covered peanuts into the grocery sack. “Still a junk-food goddess, I see,” he said, handing it over.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. Some of us really are what we first appear to be.”
Uh-oh, the way things were shaping up didn’t look promising! “Look, Lily, you don’t owe me a damn thing—”
“How magnanimous of you!”
“And if you insist, I won’t push you to hear me out. But I’ve come a long way, in more ways than one, since we last spoke, so I’m asking you, please, to let me try to put a few things right.” He stepped closer, hemming her into the narrow space between the intercom panel and the front door. “Please?”
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she warned, wielding the bread like a sword. “I don’t ever want you to touch me again!”
“That’s a pity,” he said softly, “because I find myself wanting to touch you very badly. But it’s not my primary reason for being here.”
“Then what is?”
He glanced around. “Do we really have to go into it here? Isn’t there someplace more private we can talk—a coffee shop or a hotel lounge?”
“I’ve got perishables that need to be refrigerated,” she said, eyeing him narrowly. “You can come up to my apartment and I’ll give you ten minutes to say your piece, then you’re out of here.”
Her home was spacious and as elegantly understated as she herself. “Lovely view you’ve got,” he remarked, strolling to the balcony and looking over the treetops to the curving shoreline below.
“Ten minutes, Sebastian,” she reminded him, stashing her stuff in the streamlined kitchen. “So never mind the small talk.”
“Okay.” He pivoted to face her. “I’ve been a
damned fool. I know I treated you shabbily. I should have trusted you, taken you at your word—at face value, as you once said. You’re furious with me, and I don’t blame you. And I want you to know I’m sorry.”
“Are you really? And what brought about this massive change of heart?” she inquired coldly. “Could it have something to do with the fact that you’ve finally got the goods on my oh-so-shady past, and now have proof I’m not the reincarnation of Lizzie Borden, after all?”
“Well, I—”
“Don’t bother denying it, Sebastian. You’re not the only legal eagle on the planet with connections. The minute I got back to Vancouver, I contacted my lawyer and let her know exactly what you’d been up to. She flushed out your weasely little sleuth in no time flat and he, in turn, relayed to you everything he subsequently learned from her—which is that I’m really quite harmless and have no evil designs on any of the people you guard so jealously.”
“All true, every word,” he said. “And I apologize for having ever doubted you.”
“And is that all you came to say?”
He’d thought he could manage the rest. Admit that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Tell her that she…that he…that what he felt for her amounted to…
Love: the most straightforward four-letter word in the world, and the most difficult to say, lodged in his throat and he couldn’t spit it out. Instead he hedged the question with pompous, pointless evasions that he knew weren’t what she wanted to hear. “It’s the most important thing, certainly. I take no pleasure in having judged you so harshly.”
“Well, hope that God can forgive you,” she said, “because I can’t. I’m not interested in an apology made after the fact. You didn’t believe in me when it counted, Sebastian, and I don’t need your support now.”
“Jeez!” he said, frustration getting the better of him in the face of her obstinacy. “You’re not entirely blameless in all this, you know, coming across as the poor orphaned little waif in mourning one minute, then parading around the next with enough clothes and jewelry stashed in your wardrobe to keep a countess on a world tour well dressed!”
Mistress on His Terms Page 14
