Mistress on his Terms

“No need to take out your frustrations on your food, Ms. Talbot. That’s not my heart you’re impaling.”

More’s the pity! “Oh, shut up!” she said, wondering why she’d ever thought coming here was a good idea in the first place. Hugo Preston might have sounded eager to meet her, but he hadn’t cared enough to pursue the connection until she’d approached him. Given her other troubles, she didn’t need the aggravation of having his obnoxious stepson enter the mix! “Just shut up and eat, and let’s get this whole miserable evening over with as soon as possible.”

But it was not to be. When at last they were ready to leave, the waitress brought more than their bill. “Hope you folks aren’t planning to go far tonight. Just got word of flash floods right through the area. Police are asking people to stay off the roads.”

“Oh, brother, just what I need to make the day complete!” Sebastian threw down a fistful of money and glowered at Lily as if she were in cahoots with God and had personally orchestrated the storm. “Grab your stuff and let’s get moving.”

“But if the police are warning people to stay put—?”

He took her elbow and hustled her out to the porch. “We don’t have a whole lot of choice, unless you want to spend the night here.”

“Perish the thought!”

A small river was running through the parking lot, a fact Lily discovered when she inadvertently stepped in it and felt water splashing up past her ankles. Not that it really mattered; by the time she flung herself into the car, she was soaked to the skin all over.

Sebastian hadn’t fared much better. Great patches of rain darkened the shoulders of his pale gray suit jacket, the cuffs of his trousers were dripping, and his hair, like hers, was plastered to his head.

Muttering words unfit to be repeated in decent company, he fired up the engine, started the windshield wipers slapping and inched the car over the rutted ground toward the road. Before they’d even cleared the parking lot, the side windows had misted over and the air was filled with the smell of wet clothes and warm damp skin. In fact, Lily was pretty sure she could see steam rising from her skirt.

To describe the driving conditions as poor didn’t approach reality. In fact, they were ghastly. The road ahead resembled a dark tunnel into which they were hurtling with no clear idea of where it might curve to the right or left.

Fists clenched so tight her fingernails gouged the palms of her hands, Lily huddled in her seat and prayed they’d reach Stentonbridge without incident. But they’d covered only about forty miles of the remaining distance when Sebastian brought the car to a sudden, screeching halt.

There was no sign of human habitation; no lights in farmhouses, no illuminated storefronts, no street lamps. Nothing but the driving rain pounding on the car roof like urgent jungle drums, and the dark shapes of trees twisting in the wind.

“Why are we stopping here?” she said. “Or aren’t I allowed to ask?”

And then she saw. Where earlier in the day there’d been a bridge over a ravine, there now was a torrent of muddy water cascading down the hillside and taking with it everything that stood in its path. Another twenty feet, and the car would have careened into empty space, then plunged into the swirling rapids.

“Precisely,” Sebastian said, hearing her shocked gasp.

It was late July. High summer in that part of Ontario. Even the nights were warm. But suddenly she was freezingly cold and shivering so hard that her teeth rattled.

This was how it happened: one minute people were alive, with the blood flowing through their veins, and their minds full of plans for the next day, the next year…and then, in less time than it took to blink, it was all over. That’s how it had been for her parents, and how it had almost been for her.

Tragedy wasn’t selective in its choice of victims; it could strike twice.

She tried to breathe and could not. The air inside the car was too close, too drenched, and she was suffocating. With a strangled moan, she released the buckle of her seat belt and fumbled for the door handle.

Her lungs were bursting. She had to get out—out into the open air. With a mighty shove, she sent the door flying wide and half-fell, half-crawled from her seat. Never mind the rain pelting down, or the wind whipping wet strands of hair across her face. Anything was better than being locked in the close confines of that long, low-slung burgundy car, which all at once looked and felt too much like a mahogany coffin.

Blind with panic, she set off through the wild night with one thought uppermost in her mind: to find her way back to the brightly lit safety of the roadside cafе. She’d covered no more than a few feet, however, before she blundered full tilt into a solid wall of resistance and felt her arms pinioned in an iron hold.

“Have you lost your tiny mind?” Sebastian Caine bellowed, raising his voice above the din of the waterfall. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“We were almost killed!”

“And almost isn’t good enough? You want to finish off the job?”

“I w-want…” But the irrational, superstitious terror that had propelled her out of the car and sent her stumbling away in the dark refused to translate into words. She tasted salt and was astonished to find tears mingling with the rain on her face. To her shame, a great ugly sob broke loose from her throat.

“Stop that!” he ordered. “Nothing’s happened yet. At least have the decency to wait until real calamity strikes before you decide to fall apart.” He gave her a little shake, but the hint of sympathy texturing his next remark showed he wasn’t as blind to the cause of her distress as he’d first appeared. “Look, I appreciate that your parents’ accident must still be pretty vivid in your mind, but letting your imagination run wild isn’t helping. Get a grip, Lily, and go back to the car.”

“I don’t think I can,” she wailed.

Even though the night was black as the inside of a cave, she sensed his frustration. “Then let me make it easy for you!”

Before she knew what was happening, he bent down, grabbed her behind her knees and flung her, firefighter-fashion, over his shoulder. Oblivious to her shriek of outrage or her hands clawing at his back, he marched back to the car and tossed her into the passenger seat as if she were a sack of potatoes.

“You’ve taxed my patience enough for one day,” he informed her savagely, yanking her seat belt into place, “so don’t even think about pulling another stunt like the last one, or you will wind up alone on the side of the road and let me tell you, it won’t be an experience you’ll want to talk about—always assuming, of course, that you survive the night.” Then, as a further inducement to comply with his orders, “You do know, of course, that this whole area’s swarming with cougars and snakes. And vampire bats.”

He slammed her door, raced back to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“You’re lying,” she said shakily. “Especially about the bats.”

In the glow from the dashboard, his grin and the whites of his eyes gleamed demonically. “Prove it.”

Unable to drum up an answering smile she huddled down in the seat, listless with defeat. The day, which had started out so full of anticipation, had sunk too far in disappointment to be redeemed with humor and she was beyond fighting to save it. She just wanted it to be over.

As he swung the car around, the headlights sliced across the landscape, turning the rain to long silver darning needles spearing the night. “We passed a motel about ten miles back. Let’s hope the road hasn’t washed out between here and there, and that they still have vacancies.”

Luck was with them, but barely. The motel had been built in the fifties and hadn’t seen a dollar spent on it since. A bare bulb hung above the desk in the office. Tears in the vinyl padding on the one chair were held together with duct tape. The manager, Lily noticed with a shudder, reeked of tobacco and had tufts of hair growing out of his ears, which left him looking like a troll.

“Busy night tonight, what with the weather and all,” he told them. “Only got the one room left. Take it or leave it, folks. You don’t want it, someone else will.”

“We’ll take it,” Sebastian said, slapping down a credit card and filling out the registration card.

“I’m not spending the night in the same room with you,” Lily informed him, trailing behind as he marched to their assigned unit.

“You’d rather sleep in the car?”

“No!”

He unlocked door number nineteen and flung it open. “Well, I’m not offering to, if that’s what you’re hoping, so step inside and make yourself at home while I unload our stuff.”

“Sebastian,” she exclaimed, still hovering on the threshold when he returned with her luggage, a zippered nylon sports bag, and a newspaper, “this place is a flea pit!”

He reined in a sigh. “So sorry it isn’t up to the five-star standards you were probably hoping for, but it’s warm and dry, isn’t it? There’s a shower and a bed.”

Exactly. One bed! Not a bed and a pull-out sofa, not even an armchair. Just a double mattress that sagged in the middle and was covered by an ugly green bedspread, which had seen better days. The only other furniture consisted of a nightstand holding a fake wood reading lamp, a ratty chest of drawers with a TV on top, and a straight-back chair that matched the one in the office, even down to the duct tape patching.

“I’m not sleeping on that bed!”

He shrugged. “Sack out on the floor then.”

Not an inviting prospect, either. There were suspicious stains on the threadbare carpet. “You’re the most insensitive creature I’ve ever met!”

“And you’re a spoiled brat.” Kicking the door closed, he dumped her suitcases next to it, tossed the sports bag and newspaper on the bed, and shrugged out of his jacket. His shoes and socks came off next, followed by his tie.