London's Eligible Bachelors. Sharon Kendrick

Swiftly following in her footsteps, he went and banged his fist on the door. ‘Oh, damn!’

      Behind the door, Sabrina froze. Just keep quiet, some instinct of preservation told her. Keep very quiet and just don’t answer and he might go away.

      ‘Sabrina! Open the damned door. We both know you can’t possibly be asleep.’

      She shook her head. ‘Go away.’

      ‘I’m not moving from this spot until you open the door and come out and talk to me. That way neither of us will get to sleep and that means we’ll both be bad-tempered at work tomorrow.’

      You and your precious work, thought Sabrina, trying to concentrate on something—anything—other than how she wanted to open the door and fall into his arms, and…and…

      ‘Alternatively, I could kick it down,’ he promised in a voice of silky intent.

      It was such an outrageous proposal that Sabrina very nearly smiled. ‘You wouldn’t do that,’ she sniffed.

      ‘Not unless you make me,’ he agreed mockingly. ‘So, are you going to open the door now? Or not?’

      Slowly, she complied, her fingers clutching onto the handle as if they were petrified, gearing herself up to withstand Guy’s fury at her presumptuous behaviour. But when she dared to look up into his face it was to see a look of bitter regret written there, and Sabrina felt the trembling approach of tears. If she weren’t careful, she was in terrible danger of exposing all her desperate insecurities to him.

      ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she said shakily. ‘I had no right—’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. It was the most stupid and insensitive thing to do and, oh, God, Sabrina…’ His voice deepened to a caress as he saw her face crumple. ‘Princess, don’t cry. Please, don’t cry.’

      ‘I’m n-not c-crying,’ she sobbed quietly, trying simultaneously to push him out of the room and close the door after him, and failing miserably to do either.

      Saying something that she couldn’t quite make out, Guy just grabbed her by the hand and steered her into the sitting room.

      ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she spluttered.

      ‘What does it look like? I’m taking you somewhere where we can talk.’ Somewhere that didn’t involve a bed. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to have you fainting on me for a second time!’

      ‘I’m not going to faint. I want to go to bed,’ she said plaintively.

      ‘Well, we need to talk,’ he said grimly. ‘Or, rather, you need to talk, princess.’

      He pushed her down very gently on the sofa and covered her with a cashmere throw, which was as light as a feather and as warm as toast.

      ‘That’s nice,’ she said automatically.

      It was also vital, in his opinion, that she cover up. If he wanted to talk to her—or, rather, have her talk to him—then he needed to concentrate. And it would be damned nigh impossible trying to concentrate on anything—other than an urgent need to possess her—when that silky robe was clinging like honey to the sweet swell of her limbs and moulding the perfect outline of her tiny breasts.

      He sat down next to her and stared into the pale heart of her face. ‘It was thoughtless of me. I should have telephoned—told you I was going to be late.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head. ‘I had no right to expect—’

      ‘You had every right to expect consideration,’ he refuted heatedly. ‘And at least a modicum of understanding.’ There was a grim kind of pause and his grey eyes glittered with self-recrimination. ‘And I showed you neither.’ He had deliberately stayed out tonight—and he still wasn’t sure why—without thinking through the consequences of his actions. ‘Neither,’ he finished bitterly.

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she repeated, and even managed to raise her shoulders in a shrug, as if it really didn’t matter, but he shook his head like a man who was onto something and wouldn’t give up.

      ‘Why don’t you tell me,’ he said slowly, ‘about the night Michael died? Is that what happened? Were you waiting for him and he never came?’

      Something in the burning intensity of his eyes pierced right through the barriers she’d built around herself. She’d pushed the memories of that night to the far recesses of her mind. Deliberately. It had been a defence mechanism to shield her from the bitter pain, and the guilt. She’d refused counsellors and her mother’s faltering requests that she open up and talk to someone.

      But something in Guy’s face completely disarmed her, and her words of defiance and denial died on her lips.

      ‘OK, I’ll tell.’ She nodded her head slowly. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’ There was a pause while she struggled to find the right words. ‘Like I said, Michael wanted to go out that night and I didn’t, and it was more than about the fact we couldn’t afford it. It was a filthy night. The weather was awful…snow and ice.’

      She took a slow, shuddering breath and stared at him as she forced herself to face up to the truth for the first time. ‘Just awful. I said that it wasn’t a good night to be out driving…but he wouldn’t listen…He just wouldn’t listen!’

      Guy nodded as the strands of her story began to be woven together, beginning to make some sense of her guilt.

      ‘I told him to be sure and ring me when he got to the pub, only the phone call didn’t come, and I wasn’t sure if he was sulking because he was angry with me…and…’

      ‘And?’ His voice was soft. Too soft. How could you resist a voice that soft?

      ‘And when I rang the pub…’ Sabrina bit her lip ‘…they said they hadn’t seen him. So I thought he must have changed his mind about going there, never dreaming…never dreaming—’

      ‘Never dreaming that the inconceivable had happened,’ he said carefully, ‘and that he’d never be coming back again?’

      His words were edged with anger, and an emotion it took her a moment or two to recognise. Pain. ‘That’s right,’ she agreed slowly.

      ‘So you think that you should have stopped him from driving that night?’

      ‘Of course I should have stopped him!’ she shot back bitterly, but Guy shook his dark head.

      ‘Don’t you know that we can’t govern other people’s lives?’ he demanded quietly. ‘Or decide their destiny. You could have stopped him from going, but how do you know that he wouldn’t have been hit by a bus on his way to work the next day? Maybe,’ he added, with slow deliberation, ‘maybe it was just his time.’

      Her lips froze. ‘His time?’

      ‘To die.’ His mouth hardened.

      ‘Fate,’ she elaborated painfully. ‘That’s fate.’

      ‘Yeah, fate.’

      She stared straight into the burning silver gaze, dazzled by it. ‘You honestly believe that?’ she whispered, and he gave a hollow kind of laugh.

      ‘Sometimes it’s easier to think of it that way.’ He shrugged. ‘Easier for the living to let go and carry on. And you have to let go, Sabrina, you have to—you must realise that. Don’t you?’

      ‘But I feel so guilty!’

      ‘Because he’s dead and you’re alive?’

      His perception took her breath away. ‘Yes.’

      He gave a brittle smile. ‘But nothing can change that, Sabrina. Nothing can bring him back. You owe it to yourself to let go. And to Michael.’

      ‘Yes.’ She sighed with a kind of surrender made all the easier by that luminous look