Mistress on His Terms

by Catherine Spencer

  “I’m afraid it’s out of the question, sir. Any other medical considerations aside, your age is against you.”

  “I want you to alert every hospital on this continent,” Sebastian said, struggling to contain the anger choking him. “Farther than that, in fact. Europe, Asia, Australia, South America. I’ll personally charter a plane anywhere in the world and pay whatever it costs to get a healthy kidney here in time, if one should be needed.”

  “Before you go that far, there is another option,” Lily announced from the doorway. Her eyes met his and he saw that she’d been crying. But her gaze and voice held steady. “I want to be tested as a possible donor.”

  “Oh, my dear!” his mother wept. “Oh, Lily, thank you!”

  “My darling daughter, you’ve already given us so much. And now this…” Hugo struggled to his feet.

  “No!” Sebastian said. “You will not do this, Lily!”

  “And why not?” she said. “Natalie’s my sister, too. You didn’t hesitate to offer her one of your kidneys. Why wouldn’t I be willing to do the same?”

  “Because,” he said.

  She lifted her eyebrows in mild reproof. “You’re going to have to do a lot better than that, Sebastian. ‘Because’ is no answer at all.”

  “There are other reasons,” he blustered, torn between two unacceptable alternatives. He could not stand idly by and let Nat die, but the thought of Lily…his Lily…of her lovely, perfect body being…! “No,” he said again. “There has to be another way.”

  “Perhaps,” one of the doctors said, “you all need to sleep on this. It’s not a decision to be made lightly, and nothing’s going to be done tonight anyway, so I suggest you go home and try to get some rest. People generally don’t make the best choices when they’re overtired and overstressed. If you’re still of the same mind tomorrow,” he concluded, addressing his last remark to Lily, “let us know and we’ll arrange for you to be tested.”

  “And if I’m a compatible donor?”

  “If it becomes necessary—and I stress that we have not reached that point yet and hopefully never will—you and your sister will be put under the care of a urologist with transplant experience. He will perform the surgery.”

  “Take Lily home,” Hugo said, after the medical team had left. “Your mother and I will stay with Natalie.”

  “You heard the doctor,” Sebastian told him. “We all need to get some rest.”

  “And you know very well that neither of us will sleep a wink away from this hospital. There are comfortable recliners in the waiting area, with plenty of blankets and pillows. I’ll call you the minute there’s any change, but our place is here with our child, Sebastian, and I’ll rest easier if I know you’re taking care of my other daughter.”

  Oh, he’d take care of her, all right! If it took him all night, he’d dissuade Lily from her impulsive offer. “Okay,” he said, “we’re out of here. Come on, Lily, I’ll drive you home.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “YOU’VE missed the turnoff for the main gates,” Lily told him.

  They were the first words she’d spoken since they left the hospital. Buried in her own thoughts and knowing he was just as occupied with his, she’d seen no point in trying to engage him in empty conversation.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  “To my place. I use the rear driveway. It’s faster.”

  She didn’t want to go to his place. She was too vulnerable to face the memories it would stir up. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Sebastian.”

  “If we should be called to the hospital in the middle of the night, we’ll make it there a lot faster if I don’t have to stop by the main house first to collect you.”

  Half a mile farther down the road, he swung the car through a set of smaller gates and followed a narrow, tree-lined lane, which ended in a clearing in front of the stables. “Also,” he said, switching off the engine and turning to face her, “you and I have to talk.”

  “Talking never gets us anywhere but into trouble.” She pushed her hair away from her face wearily. “And I don’t know about you, Sebastian, but I’ve had just about as much of that as I can take for one day.”

  “Fine. I’ll do the talking and all you have to do is listen.” He stepped out of the car and came around to her door. “Come on, Lily. This is no time for us to be on opposite sides. We’ve got to hang together.”

  She was too tired to argue and, if truth be told, afraid to be alone. Too many nightmares waited. Stoically she watched while he unloaded her luggage from the trunk, then followed him inside the stables and up the winding staircase.

  His apartment had a different feel to it with summer gone. A fire snoozed behind glass doors in the hearth and threw a pale orange glow on the high whitewashed ceiling, and he’d moved the leather couches so that they flanked the hearth. Only one window stood open a crack. Although the view beyond was obscured by night, she could hear the river flowing quietly at the foot of the property and was reminded of the many times she and Natalie had walked Katie along its banks. Everywhere she turned, it seemed, there were memories that brought her nothing but pain.

  Sebastian dumped her bags on the landing and went to the armoire. She heard the clink of crystal, the splash of liquid—déjà vu again. “Here,” he said, coming to where she’d collapsed on one of the couches. “Stay put and drink this.”

  Suspiciously she inspected the glass he thrust into her hand. “What is it?”

  “Not poison, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I’m sticking with scotch, but when I knew you were coming back, I laid in a supply of the sherry you like. Come on, Lily, don’t make me hold your nose and pour it down your throat. We both need something to fortify us.”

  “I doubt alcohol’s going to do it,” she said. “It’s a depressant, in case you didn’t know, and I’m already feeling low enough.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to bury a sigh. “What’s involved in donating a kidney, Sebastian?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he disappeared through a doorway at the back of the room and a moment later, she heard the sound of pots and pans clattering, followed shortly thereafter by the smell of maple-cured bacon frying.

  Sebastian Caine, lawyer and lover, she’d come to know well, but this sudden display of domesticity was something new. Curiosity getting the better of the fatigue that had attacked her limbs the minute she sank into the comfort of the couch, she went to investigate.

  Shirtsleeves rolled back to just below the elbow and a dish towel tucked in the waist of his dark gray cords, he was slicing tomatoes at a butcher-block island separating the working half of his kitchen from a small dining nook.

  Without bothering to look up from the task, he said, “I thought I told you to stay put.”

  “I wanted to see your kitchen.” She leaned against the doorway. Actually “wilted” was a more apt description as the sherry took effect, spreading a warm, delicious lassitude throughout her body. “Somehow, I never expected you’d have one.”

  A trace of amusement lightened his expression. “You thought elves came in the night and left food on my doorstep?”

  “I suppose I never gave the matter much thought at all. We’ve always had…other avenues to explore whenever we’ve been together.” She took a sip of the sherry. “You didn’t answer my question, Sebastian.”

  “What question?”

  “The one about kidney transplants. You’ve already looked into it so tell me, what do living donors face?”

  He set aside the tomatoes, popped two slices of bread into the toaster and opened the refrigerator. “Sorry I can’t offer you French fries,” he said, “but I make a pretty mean bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. You like mayo on yours?”

  “You can put strawberry jam on it, for all I care! Stop evading the question, Sebastian. I refuse to be brushed off like this.”

  “And I refuse to dwell on something that’s not going to happen. Nat’s going to recover on her own
.”

  “And if she doesn’t, and it turns out she needs a kidney from someone else and you aren’t a suitable donor, what then? Are you still going to tell me to go away and be quiet?”

  “You never know when to quit, do you, Lily?” he said savagely, slamming a head of lettuce and a jar of mayonnaise on the counter, before kicking closed the refrigerator door. “You just have to keep poking away at a subject until you’ve exhausted it and everyone connected with it. What will it take to satisfy you?”

  “Having you treat me as a family member instead of some interfering pariah would be a good place to start. And receiving reasonable answers to reasonable questions.”

  “Fine.” His shoulders slumped. “You’ll undergo blood tests and X rays to determine if you’re a healthy prospective donor and immunologically compatible with Nat.” The toast popped up. He removed it and put in two more slices of bread. “If you pass that hurdle, you’ll go through more lab tests and a final evaluation, including assessment by a social worker to ensure that you’re genuinely willing to donate.”

  “And then?”

  He looked up and gave her a blast from those unforgettable blue eyes. “If all systems are go, they’ll cut you open and remove a kidney.”

  He put it like that deliberately, hoping the bluntness of his words would shock her into reconsidering. He should have known better. She’d weathered plenty of storms in the last year. One more wasn’t going to defeat her.

  “It will be worth it, if that’s what it takes to save Natalie’s life,” she said quietly.

  “And what about your life?” he raged, grabbing the second batch of toast and slapping it down on the cutting board. “What about the risks you’d be taking, the possible future restrictions you could face with your own health?”

  “Life’s full of risks, Sebastian. We live with them from the moment we’re born. Most of the time, we’re able to avoid them, but when someone we love is in trouble, we don’t stop to count the cost. We do what we can to help, and if that means taking chances, well…” She shrugged. “We take them. If it turns out that Natalie needs a kidney and I’m able to give her one, I will.”

  He thought of himself as a man able to take whatever life dished out, but suddenly, he’d reached his limit. He hadn’t slept in a week. He’d watched his mother and Hugo age before his eyes. He’d watched Nat slide deeper into illness and never doubted he’d move heaven and earth to make her well again. But he hadn’t reckoned on this; on being caught so squarely between a rock and a hard place that he felt as if his heart were being squeezed dry.

  Overcome, he swung away and went to lean on the dining table. Planting both hands on its surface, he stared down at them and willed his vision to clear. It would have, too, if Lily hadn’t come up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, and said, “We are defined by the choices we make, Sebastian. At the end of the day, they are what count.”

  The words triggered something deep inside him that nothing she’d ever said or done before had quite managed to touch. He’d done his best not to like her, to find good reason to despise her, to forget he’d ever met her. But with those two sentences, she forced him to acknowledge the absolute decency and goodness which were so much a factor in what made her beautiful.

  His chest heaved in a silent sob. Part of his mind—the proud, stupid, arrogant part that men swaggered about because it made them feel invincible—reviled him for showing such weakness. But another part gave him the courage to say what had been in his heart for months. “I love you, Lily. Too much to let you do this. Please…don’t. Don’t!”

  “It’s for Natalie. My sister—your sister.” She slackened her hold and forced him to turn and face her. “How can you ask me not to do this, not to give?”

  “Because,” he said, his voice breaking, “if anything should happen to you, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  She looked at him, and he saw the future in her eyes. It promised more heaven than he knew existed, if only they could find their way through the present. “You’ve never been a fearful man, Sebastian,” she said. “Don’t fail me now when I need your courage to help get me through this.”

  He clamped down on the moan rising in his throat but could do nothing to stem the tears suddenly clouding his eyes. Her face grew indistinct, blurred, so that all he had to guide him was the memory of how she looked. Of the way her mouth turned up in a smile; of how her eyes grew drowsy with passion, and her skin flushed with anticipation when he made love to her.

  If he were to lose her, this is how it would be: memories growing dimmer each year until all he had left was the fading echo of her voice.

  Blindly he reached for her and buried his face against her hair. He’d fought her when he could have been loving her and he was fighting her still because he did love her. More than anyone, even Nat.

  “You’ve accused me of not accepting you into this family,” he said, when at last he had himself in control again, “and you were right. I didn’t want to see you in that light because family members aren’t supposed to fall in love. They aren’t supposed to make love.”

  “Not even when there’s no blood connection between them?” She lifted her face to his. “Oh, Sebastian, you’re too fine a man to hide behind that kind of subterfuge.”

  “Fine? Is that why I repeatedly hurt and rejected you, when all you ever asked for was acceptance? Is that why I engaged a stranger to delve into your private life, instead of having the decency to come straight out and ask you to share yourself with me in every way, and not just between the sheets?”

  “I didn’t say you were perfect,” she whispered, her hands skimming over his features with such tenderness that he could have wept. “Just that—”

  The phone rang before she could finish and, for a moment, they both froze. An hour before, he’d have shoved her away, turned his back to her while he answered, shut her out in as many ways as he could devise, just to keep uppermost in both their minds who was in control. Now, he anchored her to his side as he reached out with his other arm and lifted the receiver, holding it so they could both hear.

  “Sebastian?” His stepfather’s voice shook with emotion.

  “I’m here, Hugo,” he said steadily. “Lily and I both are. Has there been a change? Should we come back to the hospital?”

  “No…no…! I—” He stopped briefly, obviously fighting for composure.

  Glancing down, Sebastian saw Lily’s eyes fill with tears. Hugging her closer, he said, “It’s bad news, isn’t it? We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “No,” Hugo said again. “That’s why I’m calling—to tell you that the odds at last have swung in Natalie’s favor. She’s made a remarkable turnaround and is finally responding to treatment. The doctor was just in to speak to us. It’s going to take time, but he’s very optimistic she’ll make a full recovery.”

  Sebastian dropped his forehead to Lily’s and closed his eyes. “Thank God,” he breathed.

  “Our reaction exactly,” Hugo said. “Listen, I know it’s late and you must both be exhausted, so I won’t keep you on the phone any longer, but I didn’t think you’d mind being disturbed for news like this. Give our love to Lily, and both of you get some sleep. I know your mother and I will.”

  Slowly Sebastian hung up and turned to face Lily again. “You heard all that?”

  Her mouth trembled and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Every word.”

  He wiped at the tear with his thumb. “Think you’ll be able to sleep now?”

  She shook her head. “Suddenly I’m not tired anymore.”

  “Me, neither.” He drew her toward him until his mouth grazed hers. “You want to do something else?”

  The emotion of the moment had built to a crescendo they knew could be satisfied only one way. Smiling shakily, she said, “It depends.”

  “Oh, really?” He pressed a kiss to each of her eyelids. “On what?”

  “On what else you have in mind.” Her hands fluttered over him, refined instr
uments of torture and delight.

  Heat shot through him. Curling his hand around the back of her neck, he steered her down the hall toward the bedroom. “You said earlier that we get into trouble when we talk, and you were right. How about I show you, instead?”

  Much later, when she’d exhausted him and he wondered if he’d ever be able to rise to the occasion again, she had the nerve to say she was hungry. “Cripes, woman, you’re insatiable,” he complained.

  “I was thinking about those sandwiches you made. It seems a pity to let them go to waste.”

  He opened one eye. “You want ketchup on yours?”

  Her smile flowed over him like melted honey and from the way his body responded, he decided there was still life in the old tiger, after all. “I want you,” she said, walking her fingers down his chest. “With or without ketchup.”

  They finally ate the cold BLT sandwiches for breakfast, and washed them down with champagne and orange juice. “So where do we go from here?” he asked, watching as she loaded the dirty plates into the dishwasher he never bothered to use.

  Even though she had her back to him, he saw the way she stiffened at the question and would have laid money on the doubts suddenly chasing through her mind. “I suppose, to the hospital and eventually, when I know Natalie’s really out of the woods, I’ll go back to the West Coast.”

  “How about to the altar with me, instead?”

  Silence hung in the air for several seconds before she asked incredulously, “Are you offering to marry me?”

  “Well, it’s a lousy job, I know, but someone has to do it.”

  Very slowly, she turned to face him. “Well, thank you very much, but no, I don’t think so.”

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Why the hell not, Lily?”

  “Because you happened to come into my life at a time when I was feeling lonely and abandoned, and needed someone. Hugo has Cynthia and Natalie and, for a while, I had you. But I never really expected it would be for keeps. You’re not the permanent kind, Sebastian. You’ve told me so yourself, more than once.”