Mistress on his Terms. Catherine Spencer

was either a complete innocent or a contemptible schemer, and until he determined which, he wasn’t about to let down his guard. “I don’t have to go looking, Ms. Talbot. I live by the credo Give a person enough rope and she’ll eventually hang herself.” He paused meaningfully. “You’d do well to remember that.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      LILY shook her head in bewilderment, floored by his unremitting hostility. “Well, so much for striking up pleasant dinner conversation!”

      “I’m sorry if the truth offends you. We can change the subject if you like, and talk about the weather instead.”

      “I’d prefer not to talk to you at all. You’ve been nothing but disagreeable from the minute you set eyes on me and I’m tired of trying to figure out why. I’m beginning to suspect you don’t have to have a reason because you’re the kind who makes a career out of being miserable.”

      “At least we’re not harboring any illusions about what each of us thinks of the other.”

      There was no getting past that steely reserve of his, no hint of humanity or warmth in his makeup. He might be handsome as sin on the outside, but inside he was as dry as the law books he probably considered riveting bedtime reading. “Oh, go soak your head!” she snapped.

      He looked mildly astonished, as if he thought he had a corner on the insult market. “Now who’s being offensive?”

      “I am,” she allowed, “because trying to be pleasant about anything is a lost cause with you, Sebastian Caine. You’re fixated on being as insufferable as possible, whether or not you have just cause.”

      Their meal arrived then, so she poured a dollop of ketchup on her plate and stabbed a fork into her French fries.

      “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 café. 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