“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.
“What part is giving you trouble?” she asked Flower with an overbright, shaky smile.
* * * * *
She arrived home nearly an hour later even though the drive from work was twenty minutes. She could, of course, lie and say that it took her that long to get home; Colin had no idea where she worked. But Sibyl couldn’t lie, she’d already lied to Colin once and if they kept stacking up she knew she’d get them messed up and get caught in one of them one day.
She pushed open the door to her house, feelings of dread seeping through her body.
Colin was standing in the living room staring out the back window, emanating rage even though he didn’t move a muscle.
He had a drink in his hand. Gin and tonic. Once she knew that was his preference, she made certain she stocked it in her house, just like she made certain she had Diet Coke and rum when her sister came around, good Scotch when her father was there and margarita mix and tequila for her mother.
The minute she entered the cottage, he turned around.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
“I told you, Colin, I was at work,” she replied softly.
He processed this and she could tell by the muscle leaping in his jaw that he did not like it one bit. Then he put his glass on a table and started toward her.
“Your phone is off,” he informed her.
“Yes, I… well, I had to turn it off.”
She really wished she was a good liar. It would certainly help in this situation.
“Why is that?” His voice sounded curious, curious and cold and very, very menacing.
He’d reached her and when he did, his hand came up to curl around the side of her neck. This could have been a loverly gesture but, at that moment, it was most definitely not.
“I was in the middle of something urgent and –” she started, his eyes turned to stone and immediately she stopped speaking.
“Did you forget the rules?” he asked in a quiet, scary tone.
No, she didn’t, though she had been harbouring some, small, lingering hope that he had, until that moment.
She shook her head. “Colin, I –”
“Be quiet,” he ordered softly, dangerously and thus she felt a tremor slide through her and instantly ceased speaking.
She was already in enough trouble; she was not stupid enough to throw fuel on what appeared to be a rather blazing fire.
He looked away from her, lost in thought, lost in angry thought. Then his eyes focussed on something and he smiled a wicked smile.
Sibyl, in a panic, looked behind her but all she saw was the dining area. She longed to say something, even tell him why, share a piece of herself, maybe he’d understand. But she didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to make him any angrier than he already was.