by Lucy King
She stopped. Waited. But if she’d hoped that Seb would be moved by her impassioned speech, she was to be disappointed because he merely shrugged in that infuriating way he had and said, “There’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing due.”
She stared at him. “What planet are you on? There’s everything due. She’s always needed you and she always will.”
“Then she faces a lifetime of disappointment.”
Judging by the flatness of his tone, his complete lack of concern, and the utter blankness in his eyes, that was all he had to say on the matter, and for a moment Mercy didn’t know what to say or what to do because how could he be so obstinate, so brutally bleak?
Oooh, she wanted to shake him. She wanted to pummel him. Slap him. Anything that would get some sense, some emotion into him. She could feel the urge to do it bubbling up inside her but she banked it down because while she did have fiery Latin blood flowing through her veins she wasn’t the type to resort to violence, and anyway, she doubted any physical blow she could land would make a difference.
However, nor could she fail. Not again. So Seb might consider this conversation over but she wasn’t finished. Not by any stretch of the imagination. She had plenty more to say. And yes some of it might be a bit harsh, but what did she have to lose? What did Zelda have to lose? Nothing.
“I understand why you’re like this, Seb,” she said, steeling herself to stick with the plan to go in guns blazing and bear any fallout.
“Like what?”
“All ‘I don’t give a shit about anything or anyone’.”
“There’s nothing to understand.”
“You think? Our paths may have crossed only a handful of times-” Well, four, including this evening, although none of them had been exactly chatty. “But Zel has talked about you a lot over the years and I think I know you well enough.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
She lifted her chin and took a breath. “It’s because of the accident, isn’t it?”
And that got a reaction.
Finally.
Seb’s jaw clenched. His eyes flashed. His entire body went still. “What?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said, not taking her eyes off him for even a moment even though his face was beginning to darken ominously. “When Zelda first mentioned you at school she said you used to be great. Fun. She said you used to be a wonderful big brother. She showed me a picture of you. On her phone. From before the accident. You were laughing. You looked relaxed. Happy.” As well as gorgeous, sexy and from that moment on very much the stuff of her pathetic adolescent dreams. “Then she said you changed. Virtually overnight. And knowing what I know, it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. You were driving the car when the accident happened, weren’t you? And what with that nightmare you had-”
He went even stiller. “What nightmare?”
“The one you had the night I stayed here. The one that woke me up.” The one that had first terrified her, then made her ache for him. “You were thrashing about, Seb. Crying out. Calling for your parents. You sounded as if you were in a lot of pain.” And all she’d been able to do was stroke his face and whisper that everything was all right while her heart turned inside out. “So I can make a pretty good guess at how the accident affected you,” she continued, blocking out the memory of that because it had no place in this conversation. “You had the death of your parents on your conscience. You’d made your sister and yourself orphans. You were wracked with guilt. Tormented by it. Why else would you suddenly drop out of university and enlist in the French Foreign Legion, if not to escape?”
“Stop it, Mercy. Right now.”
His eyes shot her a warning and the expression on his face was bleak and she nearly thought better of it, but she had to go on, and anyway what was he going to do? Frogmarch her out? Bodily remove her? That wasn’t very likely, was it? “No,” she said firmly. “You need to hear this, and I’m going to tell you if it’s the last thing I do. You might have gotten away with distracting me last time, but not this time.”
Seb stared at her. “Distracting you? What the hell are you talking about?”
As if he didn’t know. “Don’t bother denying it,” she said witheringly. “I’d been here barely ten minutes before you had me up against the wall, losing my mind and my train of thought along with my intention to tell you what was going on with Zelda.”
“I don’t remember you protesting.”
Mercy inwardly cringed. “I didn’t. And it’s not something I’m particularly proud of, although that’s nothing new when it comes to you.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw and if it had been anyone else she’d have said her comment had stung. “Yes, well, we all have burdens to bear,” he muttered.
And it was time to rid herself of the rest of hers. “You’ve caused Zelda enough misery, Seb, and it has to stop or you’ll lose her forever. God knows you’ve been doing an excellent job of it, pushing her away again and again. You hurt her badly, sending her to all those boarding schools when she needed you the most and then packing her off to Switzerland after we got caught drunk on that wine. I don’t think you realize how much.”
“She brought everything entirely upon herself.”
“No,” said Mercy, her voice beginning to tremble with anger and frustration. “She didn’t. You did.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Me?” he said. “How the hell do you figure that?”
Easily. “Do you feel any responsibility whatsoever for Zelda’s behavior, Seb? Because you should. I’ve known her since we were fifteen. She’s one of my best friends. I’ve seen her go through things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and it’s all been because of you. Every drink she threw down her throat, every drug she took, every single bad decision she made could have been avoided if only you’d been the kind of brother she needed. You’re five years older than her. She became your responsibility and you washed your hands of her. All she wanted was your attention. Why do you think she played up so much? All she’s ever wanted was your attention. Now she’s resigned herself to not having it, to not having you in her life, but it still cuts her up. And despite all of it she still wants to talk to you.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Neither can I. Especially since she’s moved on so brilliantly. She’s been clean for years now. And do you know that once a month the four of us – me, Zel, Dawn and Faith – all meet up in a pub? In a pub. Do you understand how hard that must be for Zel? But she sticks to her virgin mojitos and deals with it. Magnificently. I’ve never met anyone stronger, yet you weaken her. You take her down. So if you have any modicum of humanity left in you you need to sort yourself out, Seb. Whatever’s going on in your screwed up head, fix it. Let Zelda in. Surely, after everything you failed to do in the aftermath of the accident, after letting her down so badly and then not even helping her when she went off the rails, you owe her that much.”
Mercy stopped, breathing hard, her head spinning, her heart pounding, emotion rushing through her. She had to have gotten through to him. She had to…
“You know nothing, Mercedes,” he said, his face blank and his tone horribly bored. “Nothing.”
“I know you’re wallowing,” she shot back.
“Wallowing?”
“Well, what else would you call it? I get the guilt, Seb, really I do. But it’s been thirteen years and it was an accident. Just a tragic accident. You weren’t to blame. No one was. So don’t you think it’s time you stopped punishing yourself? And Zelda? Because it’s not fair. It never was.”
“You need to leave,” said Seb. “Now. And don’t think I’m above throwing you out.”
Long heavy silent seconds ticked by, and all out of words, all Mercy could do was stare at him, note the rigidity visible in every line on his face, every inch of his body and feel her heart plummet to her feet.
She’d failed. Of course she had. What had she expected? That he’d suddenly see the light and fall to his knees in grati
tude that she’d saved his soul? He had a reputation for being intransigent. Stubborn and resolute. And why would she succeed when Zelda hadn’t? She’d been an idiot coming here. There was no getting through to him. There really wasn’t. He was as implacable as rock and as cold as ice. She couldn’t appeal to his better nature because he didn’t have one. He was a lost cause who had no soul and he’d never change because he didn’t want to.
Which meant that she was wasting her time here.
And so was Zelda.
“Fine,” she said, fairly overflowing with frustration, disappointment and defeat as she got to her feet. “I’ll go. And you can carry on sticking your cowardly head in the sand if you want to. It’s your loss. And I’d have thought you’d lost quite enough already, but what do I know? You are so lucky to have her, Seb. I would have killed for a sibling. It makes me sick to see you squandering yours, so you can rot in this mausoleum of a mansion for all I care. Zelda’s better off without you anyway. She has her friends. She’ll be fine.”
*
The slam of his door echoed throughout the apartment, but Seb barely heard it above the incandescent fury that was now smashing apart the ice inside him and sweeping through him as Mercy’s words reverberated round his head.
How dare she?
How fucking dare she?
Who the hell did she think she was, coming in here, sitting on his sofa and invading his space while she looked at him, psychoanalyzed him and judged him? What gave her the bloody right to meddle like that and stir up things that were best left well alone?
Did she seriously think he didn’t know how messed up he was on practically every damn front? Nor why? Of course he knew. His parents had died and it had been his fault.
They’d been living in London at the time, where his father had been the US ambassador. Things for him back then had been good – he’d had friends and fun and life had been a breeze. At eighteen and about to go up to Cambridge, he’d had the world at his feet.
Until that horrendous, devastating night.
His parents had had a dinner out of town. At a loose end for a change and so stupidly proud that he’d just gotten his licence, he’d offered to drive them. On the way a truck swerved across the freeway, crashed through the median strip and hit them side on. His parents had been killed on impact. He’d survived.
His physical injuries had been bad. Battered and bruised, he’d broken three ribs and suffered horrendous gashes as a result of shattered glass and twisted jagged metal, but he’d recovered from those soon enough. Emotionally, however, he’d remained a wreck, and the external scars he eventually bore were nothing compared to his internal ones.
How many times had he wished he hadn’t offered to drive that night? And how often had he wished he’d driven more carefully, and crucially, more slowly?
But he hadn’t, and because he hadn’t, because he’d been driving at a couple of miles an hour over the speed limit, their car had been right in the middle of the accident instead of way behind it.
Knowing that it had been avoidable he’d held himself entirely to blame. He’d ripped his family apart and the guilt had been overwhelming, crushing and agonizing. He’d been utterly lost and he hadn’t had a clue how to cope with what he’d done.
Then there’d been Zelda.
Overnight he’d become responsible for a grieving thirteen-year-old girl, and he’d had even less of an idea what to do with her. How could he possibly comfort her when her desolation, her despair and her tears, so many tears, were all because of him? Why would she even want him to? How could she bear to live in the same house as him? To even look at him?
It broke his heart and tore at the very fiber of his being to witness the depth of her sadness but what could he say? What could he do? He didn’t know so he said, and did, nothing.
For days after the funeral he and Zelda had rattled round their aunt’s house in London like ghosts. Helpless, Seb had been unable to function until the overwhelming grief, the unbearable weight of guilt and the crushing responsibility of his sister simply became too much and he just sort of shut down.
At least it meant he could begin to operate again on a practical level. He sent his sister away to her first boarding school. He was in no place to look after her. He was in no place to do anything, except to enlist in the French Foreign Legion where he intended to push himself to extremes, to see how much he could take before he couldn’t.
And that had worked too. He’d had to request special permission for leave to deal with Zel, who’d gotten herself expelled from every school he’d sent her to, but other than those minor irritating blips, he immersed himself in army life. It was brutally tough and just what he needed. Everyone had secrets in the Legion. No one asked any questions. He could be anyone he wanted to be and he chose to be someone else. His past became a blur. The accident, his sister, the Madison fortune, the Foundation, the houses, the responsibilities, all pushed back into the recesses of his mind, forgotten about, granting him the escape and absolution he craved.
Until the day he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had come out the hero he didn’t deserve to be. He’d been lauded, feted, admired – misguidedly, of course, but then no one knew what a fraud he was. They’d tried to give him a medal but he’d declined it, and stuck it out for another couple of years, until unable to stand the continued unwanted, unmerited attention, he’d left with the aim of taking up the reins of the Madison Foundation, as if dedicating himself to running the philanthropic side of his family’s considerable operation might somehow atone for what he’d done.
As for what had become of his sister, well, since he hadn’t kept tabs on her, he’d hardly known. When he returned to New York, thanks to the media’s rabid interest in her modelling career which was impossible to avoid however hard he tried, he learned that on leaving the Swiss finishing school he’d sent her to after she’d been expelled for stealing that wine at St. John’s, she’d wrecked merry hell all across Europe, but that was about it. By that time she’d become a virtual stranger to him, careening further and further off the rails until she’d gone into rehab.
She hadn’t wanted his help anyway. He’d discovered that swiftly enough. The one time he’d been to see her in the clinic Mercy had told him about, Zel had yelled at him that it was way too late to suddenly care and so he might as well just piss off. Which was what he’d done because she clearly hadn’t wanted him there, and that was just fine with him because he didn’t care.
Now his sister still was a virtual stranger – even though she’d moved back into this house months ago – because he’d made sure their paths rarely crossed. He still didn’t have anything to say to her, even after all these years. Oh, he was aware she’d stayed clean since coming out of rehab and he knew she’d turned her back on the relentless partying she used to do, but she still shirked her responsibilities. Only three weeks ago she’d just not shown up at a Foundation gala at which she was supposed to be representing the family. And then this morning he’d looked out of the window to find the house surrounded by the paparazzi for the second time in as many weeks.
Stranger or not, though, Zelda had always been her own person, even when they’d been children. As a younger sister she’d looked up to him, sure, and sought his approval, but she’d known her own mind and she’d acted on it. As a teenager, and then as an adult, she’d made her choices and they might not have been the right ones but they’d been hers. She’d known the consequences. She was responsible for what she did. Not him. Her.
So hot, sexy little Miss Mercedes Hernandez, with her eye-popping cleavage and her fiery, wild, wince-inducing passion, with her unwanted, unwelcome interference and her insidious insinuations, was wrong. Downright wrong. She thought she knew him but she didn’t. Nightmare or no nightmare she didn’t have a clue. Not a fucking clue. If she really knew him, if she was able to see inside him, into the black, gaping hole that took up so much of him, she’d never have dared confront him. She’d have run a mile.
>
She’d certainly never have looked at him the way she had all those years ago when she and Zelda had been at school together. There’d been such adoration in her gaze, such yearning on her face back then. He’d seen it the Christmas she’d come to stay and then again that morning they’d been sitting outside the Mother Superior’s office at St. John’s. Her crush on him had been so damn obvious. She’d looked at him like she could slay his demons. Like she wanted nothing more than to look after him.
At least she didn’t look at him like that now. She looked at him as though she hated him and that was fine with him. Hatred was infinitely preferable to adoration. He didn’t want adoration. He didn’t deserve it. He never would.
So it was good Mercedes was no longer attracted to him but loathed and despised him instead. And it was good that she believed he’d taken her to bed to distract her. Far better that than her knowing the truth: that he’d slept with her simply because he hadn’t been able to resist. He didn’t need her knowing she had that kind of a hold over him. She couldn’t slay his demons anyway. No one could. Besides, he didn’t want them slain. He needed them to remember that he’d destroyed everything he’d ever cared about. To remind him that Hell would freeze over before he risked doing it again.
So he didn’t need to sort himself out. Yes, he’d screwed things up, but he was OK with that. He didn’t need therapy, despite what his sister had suggested when she’d cornered him earlier. He didn’t need anything. He wasn’t wallowing and he wasn’t a coward. He was fine.
Chapter Three
‡
What with the amount of time her MBA studies took up and the even greater amount of time she’d spent thinking about that awful confrontation with Seb, wishing she’d handled it differently, fearing she’d gone too far and despairing that she’d ruined Zelda’s chances of ever achieving a reconciliation, it had been one hell of a few weeks.
