Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(121)
Author: Kristen Ashley

His secretary stared at him and gone from her face and frame were the frustrated anger with which she’d stomped into his office.

“I… I’ve never met her,” she stammered. “How can I possibly choose a ring for her?”

Colin looked her directly in the eye. “It will be from me and for that reason I have every faith in you.”

Her eyes slid back into her head, no longer popping out in an alarming fashion and then they filled with tears. “Oh, Mr. Morgan. I would be delighted… honoured… thrilled.” Then her body jumped and she whirled. “I’ll go now,” she announced to the other side of the room and rushed across it then stopped and whirled around again. “The phone is ringing off the hook.”

“Let it, you’ve more important things to do than talk to reporters.”

She nodded in happy agreement and ran out of the room.

The minute the door clicked behind her, Colin wasted no time and picked up his phone and called Sibyl.

“Colin!” she cried out his name as greeting. “You would just not believe what’s happening here. Rick has barricaded us in the house. The reporters are storming the door as we speak!”

Colin mentally added something else to his to do list.

“Don’t talk to anyone,” he ordered.

“I can’t,” she told him. “Rick won’t let me, he’s been entirely obnoxious. He’s bossier than you. I thought, after yesterday, that he’d…”

Colin cut in to her tirade. “Let me talk to your mother.”

“Mags?”

Colin was silent for he needn’t answer, Mags was, indeed, her mother.

There was a pregnant pause and then, “What has she done now?” Sibyl’s voice was leery and more than slightly annoyed.

“Pass the phone to her,” Colin ordered.

Surprisingly without further comment, Sibyl did as she was told. He heard a rustle and then a quiet, “Mother, what have you done?”

Without answering her daughter, Mags came on the line. “Colin! It’s all adventure here. I must say, you live an exciting life.”

“Marguerite, have you been talking to the reporters?”

“Me? No siree. Especially not today, your beefcake bodyguard will only allow us out of the library for bathroom breaks and even then, he’s escorting us. I tried to shock him during my last one but he’s unshockable.”

Colin mentally added a rise to Rick’s salary to his to do list. He thought, vaguely, that this feminine trio was going to bankrupt him.

However, he’d heard Mags say something damning.

“What about yesterday?”

“Sorry?”

Colin prayed for patience. “Yesterday. Did you talk to the reporters yesterday?”

“Me?”

Colin’s prayers went unanswered.

“Yes, you.”

“No, no, er… not me. I didn’t talk to the reporters yesterday. They came to the Centre, after the police but I didn’t talk to them and I know Sibyl didn’t and… well it was all a big hustle and bustle about the carrier bags and…”

She’d left someone out.

And she was a worse liar than her daughter.

“Put my mother on the phone,” Colin ordered.

“Phoebe?”

He ground his teeth.

Then through them, he remarked, “Yes, Phoebe does happen to be my mother.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to talk to Phoebe,” she declared with sham innocence.

“Put her on the phone.”

“I think she needs a bathroom break,” Mags stalled.

“Put her on the phone.”

There was a pause and then a grumbled, “Oh, all right.”

Then there was another rustle and he heard, “It’s your son,” and then more in the background as the phone was passed, “You’re right, Billie, he is ruthless.”

Colin again gritted his teeth.

“Hello Colin,” his mother greeted him. “How’s your day?” Before he could answer, she nervously continued, “We’re in the library because Rick thinks one of the reporters could be a murderer in disguise. It’s like he wasn’t even there yesterday and doesn’t know we have the all clear. He’s instructed us not to stand by the windows and…”

He cut her off, his patience at an end, “Mum, did you talk to the reporters yesterday?”

“Why, yes. I do believe I had a word,” she said lightly, too lightly.

“Don’t do that again,” he commanded.

“Colin, you shouldn’t talk to your mother that way,” she courageously scolded, looking into the eye of the tiger and thinking he was a pu**ycat. “There is certainly no reason why your extraordinary story shouldn’t be told. It’s beautiful and I’m so happy for you, I want the world to know it. True love reigns…”

“We aren’t out of danger, the person who ordered the man to hold a knife to Sibyl’s throat is still out there. We don’t need to be goading them with stories of true love, exposing our defences or making them think our defences are down so they’ll act before we’ve caught them. I’m asking you, don’t do it again.”

She was silent.

Then she said a shaky, “Okay.”

“I don’t want Sibyl to know that she’s not out of danger.”

“You have to…”

“Don’t say a word. I’ll speak to her when I get home.”

She was again silent.

Then she let out a breathy, “Okay.”

“There will be someone there to clear the reporters within half an hour and they will remain there to watch the house. If Sibyl sees them, make something up but carry on as normal.”

“Oh…kay.” This was even shakier.

“Give the phone to Rick.”

She didn’t hand the phone to Rick. Instead she asked nonsensically, “Colin, are you, I mean, are they… and are you?”

But Colin understood her. “Nothing is going to happen to Sibyl or me,” and when he said this his voice was far quieter and definitely gentler.

Hers was no less tremulous. “Okay.”

“I’m asking her to marry me,” Colin found himself saying, simply for the sake of giving his mother a happy thought instead of leaving her with images of possible murder and despair.

There was silence again and then, “Okay,” and this time he heard tears in her voice.

“Don’t tell her that either.”