Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(58)

Mostly, he would order her about which, she thought, considering the frequency he did it, could be a part of his nature but she wasn’t in the place to test it.

For instance, once, after a long day in her Summer House Girlie Laboratory, she had put her hair up to get its heavy weight off her scalp. She’d forgotten it was up when she walked into the front room from the kitchen after he’d used his key to enter the front door. Mallory was all over him but the minute he turned his attention to her, his eyes shifted to her hair. He didn’t say a word but she lifted her hands up to tear the clip out immediately.

It was times like those, although infrequent, but always painful, she knew exactly what she was.

“How is your new young man?” Annie shouted, taking Sibyl out of her thoughts and she saw Jemma’s eyes shift to her.

No one knew about the arrangement but she had told Jemma, Kyle and Tina about Colin. She had to, in case he called her away or she couldn’t get to work for some reason. Jemma knew something was wrong but, in pure Jem Style, she didn’t push it. If Sibyl wanted to tell her then Sibyl would choose the time.

But of course, news this meaty ran like wildfire through The Community Centre and all of its patrons were agog. Not once in over a year had Sibyl had a boyfriend.

“He’s been away,” Sibyl shouted back.

“When’re we going to meet the lad?” Annie yelled.

The idea of Colin being addressed as a “lad” made Sibyl burst out laughing. The idea of him confronting all the oldies at the Pensioner’s Club nearly made her double up with laughter. He’d scare the pants off them; they’d have to have a row of ambulances available to whisk the oldies directly to hospital, all of them suffering from a rash of strokes and heart attacks.

After she stopped laughing, she yelled back, “He’s a very busy man, Annie. I don’t know.”

“Miss Sibyl, your phone’s ringing,” Ben, one of the boys who was practising a somewhat alarming rendition of a rap song (although neither she, nor Jemma, really understood the words so they couldn’t judge) in her office, stood by her and held out her mobile phone.

She saw who it was on the display, quickly got up and, as she flipped it open, ran into the Day Centre without looking back and, once there, slid the doors closed behind her.

“Hello?” she greeted.

“Sibyl,” Colin returned tersely.

It was Colin and, with that one word, she knew he was angry.

“Colin.”

“Where the f**k are you?”

Sibyl was struck dumb at his tone and his question.

He had no idea she worked at the Community Centre.

Indeed, in all their time together, he knew nothing personal about her except from what he could tell through observation and from the photographs scattered about her house.

And Sibyl did everything she could to keep it this way. If she let him in, she knew somewhere deep inside of her, she wouldn’t want to let him go. Even with what she was to him, there was no denying the otherworldly strength of her attraction to him or that bizarre connection she felt between them. She knew this and she hated it just as much as felt strangely safe in knowing it.

“I’m –” her mind raced to find a lie.

“You sound like you’re at a club.” His voice was short, curt and obviously furious.

“I’m not –”

“A bad one,” he interrupted.

She felt a hysterical giggle bubble in her throat and she gulped it down.

“I’ve been calling for an hour,” he went on.

Her eyes rounded and she took the phone away from her ear to stare at its display.

Blooming hell, she’d left it in her office.

When she put it back to her ear, he was still talking, “… home right away.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I want you home right away.”

Her heart stopped and her stomach plummeted.

Her girls were on the stage.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“At the cottage, where I’ve been for an hour.” His voice was ice cold.

You’re available to me when I say, where I say, he’d said.

Bloody, bloody hell.

“Colin –”

“Now,” he said simply.

“I’m at work,” she explained, her voice a plea.

“I don’t care,” he bit out.

“Colin, I can’t –”

“Now, Sibyl,” and, without another word, he rang off.

She flipped the phone shut and then opened it again.

Three missed calls.

Bloody hell.

She ran to the Hall just as the girls were jumping off the stage.

“Miss Sibyl,” Flower was calling to her, her voice plaintive, “we can’t get that last part right.”

“We’ll never get it right,” Katie moaned as the four of them stopped in front of Sibyl.

Sibyl was in a panic. Flower, Katie and their two friends Emma and Cheryl were staring at her with need and expectation.

And it was Colin or four little girls. She had to decide in a split second who needed her most.

It took her less than a second.

Colin would have to wait and Sibyl would have to suffer the consequences.

She turned off her phone, buried it in the back pocket of her cords and took a deep breath.