His steady tread on the gravel mocked her hasty, messy retreat. She climbed in the car and waited, clammy with horror. Although he’d told her she wasn’t his type, he knew now, if he hadn’t already suspected, she was besotted with him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SYBELLA SAT CROSS-LEGGED on her sofa, looking into the inquisitive brown eyes of her daughter’s house rabbit.
‘I committed the cardinal sin,’ she told Dodge. ‘I exposed every last one of my frailties in front of Nik Voronov. I may as well have told him no one has seen my good lingerie except the wash bag in the machine in six years.’
She answered herself with a question. ‘Can you get more specific there, Syb?’
‘I told him I was fat and lonely and pretty much desperate.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because he probably dates glamazons and his grandfather wants him to date me instead and he basically told me that wasn’t going to happen and I sort of went…crazy.’
‘Well, you do go a bit weird with a full moon.’
‘I don’t think it was the full moon, although given not only am I talking to a rabbit, I’m doing the voice so he answers back, it might be. And now I’m not even talking to the rabbit, I’m talking to myself. I am so screwed.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said a deep voice and Sybella almost fell off the couch.
Standing in the doorway off the hall was her Viking god.
‘How did you get in?’
‘You left the front door unlocked and I heard voices. I used that bell-pull. Are you aware it doesn’t work?’
Sybella’s cheeks felt red hot, mainly because she’d been caught making an idiot of herself. In front of the one person in the world she couldn’t bear to think any worse of her.
‘I’m sorry but you can’t just walk in here.’ She eased herself off the sofa carefully, not wanting to alarm Dodge, who was now sitting up, peering at Nik, ears aquiver.
‘You even apologise to intruders into your home,’ he said as if she’d revealed some secret about herself, then a look of amusement crossed his face. ‘Is that rabbit for real?’
‘His name is Dodge, and he’s a house rabbit, there’s another one around, so please keep your voice down.’
‘I wouldn’t want to frighten the woodland creatures,’ he said, lowering his voice, looking at her in a way that made Sybella weirdly think he was including her in that. He closed the door gently behind him so that suddenly her living area felt very small.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to say goodbye. I’m leaving in the morning.’
Sybella was hit by a punch of utter disappointment. He was leaving? ‘Oh.’
He wore a T-shirt and jeans, as casual as she’d seen him, only on him it looked like one of those ads in a glossy magazine where the guy was glowering sullenly at the viewer and toting some serious machismo, and usually there was a dangerous-looking motorcycle behind him. Yes, Nik Voronov appeared to have stepped out of those pages into her living room.
And he’d come to say goodbye?
‘I read your proposal about opening the gatehouse as a tourist hub for the house and estate.’
Sybella was so busy swimming in disappointment he was leaving she didn’t completely take it in.
‘‘It’s a sound proposal,’ he said. ‘I’m willing to talk about it.’
Now? This was good, he was staying—to talk about the Hall. It was a big step in the right direction—for the Hall.
Sybella did an internal eye roll. She really needed to get herself together around him.
‘The truth is I’m under a bit of pressure with the old man.’
It wasn’t what she expected to hear and it wiped all the nonsense in her head. He needed her help. He actually moved a hand over the back of his neck, the age-old posture of male admission he was willing to lay down arms. That alone spoke volumes about his feelings for his grandfather.
She melted. ‘You really love him, don’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘He’s my grandfather.’
Sybella thought of her lousy, self-interested parents and then shoved them back where they belonged, over a cliff and into the ocean of people who could break your heart if you let them.