“Thank you.” This time, he said it seriously.
“You’re welcome.” Her voice was solemn and intense and she was watching him with an entirely new look on her face, a look full of exquisite hope and he felt, for the very first time in his entire life, humbled. So humbled, if he had been standing, he would have fallen to his knees.
“Jesus, Sibyl,” he muttered as he recognised what was so profound about this moment and it being the fact that she’d let him into her heart.
And knowing that, he did the only thing he knew how to do. He made love to her, slowly. It was not about sex, about passion or about cl**ax, it was about something else. It was sweet and wild and beautiful and very nearly, but not quite, everything a coupling should be and after it was done, Colin found it had moved him to his deeply, right into his soul.
And falling asleep, his front pressed full-length against the back of her body while his arm was wrapped around her waist, his hand cupping her breast, he did not notice the dim, golden, ethereal shimmer that slid out of the bedroom, waving, undulating and growing as it spread through the house, around the house and over the house. It continued, covering the grounds of Lacybourne Manor and up into the very atmosphere, going so far as to brighten the moon in the cloudless sky.
* * * * *
The next two days in London, he was luckily so busy he only spent half of his time thinking about Sibyl.
Between meetings, he’d called her on Monday, listening to her shouting into her mobile over the wind, “We’re at Tintagel, over the other side of the ruins. Oh Colin! I haven’t been here in so long; I forgot how beautiful it is. I wish you were here.”
Colin Morgan was not one to go tramping through ruins. Ever. But regardless of that, he found himself wishing it too.
Again, he called her on Tuesday to hear what could only be described as pandemonium behind her. “Colin, I’m sorry, babe, but I can’t talk now. I’m at the Day Centre and Mags suggested a game of strip bingo to the oldies and they’ve taken her up on it. I’m in Damage Control Mode,” she spoke urgently as Colin heard the words “unlucky for some’ called in the background. “Dear goddess, they’ve started!” she groaned into the phone. “I’ll call you later.”
He didn’t care that she couldn’t talk. Not only had she called him “babe’ in her engaging American accent, he needed her to control the proposed game of Pensioner Strip Bingo. He didn’t even want to think about it much less learn it actually occurred.
On Wednesday, after a meeting finished in his conference room, he headed to his office to return some calls when his London secretary stopped him and announced, “Miss Godwin is waiting in your office.”
He nodded curtly and lengthened his stride at news of this surprise. The Godwins had come on a shopping and museum expedition to London and they were supposed to meet Colin and his entire family at Claire’s house in Kew at six o’clock.
He opened the door to see her standing across the expanse of his office, staring out the window at his unobstructed view of the Thames, Big Ben and the London Eye. She looked contemplative, standing behind his vast desk lost in thoughts he couldn’t fathom.
At her posture, he felt an unusual sense of dread creep through his bones.
He halted and shut the door and, when she heard it, her head turned to him with a jerk.
He rested his back against the door, crossed his arms on his chest and waited for her to speak. She didn’t move a muscle as she regarded him.
Finally, she broke the silence. “I left my family at the Tate,” she said in a voice so low he could barely hear her. “I came around, thinking you might have time to join us for lunch.”
Even though he was delighted at this news, he didn’t answer. Something in the way she was speaking and holding herself stopped him.
She broke his glance and looked back at the view.
After a moment, she spoke again.
“How much money do you have?” she asked the window despondently.
Without hesitation, he answered, “A lot.”
He saw her shudder and felt his heart squeeze painfully in response.
“I don’t know what to do with that information,” she admitted, her voice loaded with a wealth of meaning, none of it good for Colin.
“Does it matter?” He couldn’t believe he was in the position of having to defend his wealth. Women were normally seduced by it, coveted it, went out of their way to the point of demeaning themselves to get it.
Sibyl, however, was not like normal women.
And this made her all the more precious, and, he feared in that moment, perhaps the only thing in his life that had ever been out of his reach.
She turned to face him. “There are a lot of people who don’t have anything and you have so much.”
“I work hard for it,” he informed her honestly.