Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(63)
Author: Kristen Ashley

At his deadly tone, Sibyl felt a chill go down her spine just as she felt a soft flutter in her heart.

He flipped the phone shut.

“Don’t bother me, mate. Makes my afternoon easier,” the minibus driver remarked.

Colin looked over his shoulder at him. “Get used to it; you’re going to have a great deal of free time on your hands.”

Something about the way he said it made pretty much everyone believe it except those who didn’t couldn’t hear what was going on but when they were told, they believed it too.

“Think you’re the big man, get me sacked. She couldn’t get me sacked,” the minibus driver taunted, making it known he most definitely did not have a very high IQ or enough instinct to last an hour in the wild.

Colin slowly turned back to the man, so slowly it was crystal clear he was doing so to keep himself in rigid control.

Sibyl held her breath.

When he spoke again, Colin’s voice was as rigidly controlled as his body.

“If you ever get the chance again, which you will not, you will refer to her as Miss Godwin. And Miss Godwin doesn’t know seventeen councillors on North Somerset Council, all of whom I’ll be having my staff calling in five minutes and telling about you. If they don’t hand me your job by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll have every paper, TV and radio station in Weston and Bristol all over this estate. The Councillors will undoubtedly listen at that point as they won’t want to be the ones who allowed an incompetent, uncaring, thoughtless bastard to look after their community’s grandparents.”

After this stunning declaration, Mrs. Griffith shouted, “I know two councillors and I’m calling them in five minutes too!”

“I know three!” a gentleman (another one of Sibyl’s favourites) named Gilbert called.

“I don’t know any but I’m calling them anyway,” Marianne yelled.

Before the oldies jumped the minibus driver and brained him with their carrier bags, Kyle, ever the peacekeeper, snapped open the now unloaded wheelchair and shouted, “All right, everyone back into the Centre!”

Colin flipped open his mobile, dialled his two numbers again and said, “Mandy, I want you and every administrator on staff to call every North Somerset Councillor in my Rolodex and tell them…”

Sibyl didn’t wait to hear what he said. She helped Annie to the Centre, scooping up Marianne’s carrier bag along the way, all the while her mind whirling in an attempt to process what had just occurred.

Did Colin just make a scene in front of the Day Centre, battling her hated minibus driver nemesis and conquering him for a bunch of elderly people he didn’t even know?

She couldn’t quite believe it. She wanted to but she couldn’t.

And this was because this was the kind of stuff a dream man was made of.

And, because of what she’d done and who she was to him, Sibyl had lost all hopes of ever being his dream woman.

Dazed, she helped everyone settle back into the Centre, vaguely noticing they were all watching her closely.

She didn’t pay attention.

Instead, she was thinking there would be, soon, a life without Colin and not always, but increasingly often, he acted like her dream man.

Most especially that day.

But there was nothing she could do about that the day when her life would be without Colin.

In the meantime, however, it was a life with Colin and, in those moments she saw him tearing into her evil nemesis, she knew that she was going to make the most of every damned second of the time she had.

* * * * *

Fourteen (Colin had made a slight error in counting) oldies, Kyle, Tina, Jemma and four ten year old girls all crowded around the big windows that looked out on the patch of worn grass in front of the Day Centre.

They saw their adored, beautiful, American girl wander across the grass slowly toward the tall, dark, broad-shouldered, handsome man who was talking angrily on his mobile phone.

They watched as she approached him, stood in front of him toe-to-toe, then she leaned in and rested the top of her head against his chest, placing her hands lightly on either side of his waist.

They watched, too, as he slid one hand up her spine to curl it around the back of her neck, he pulled the phone from his ear and bent his dark head to kiss her honey one.

Then he put the phone back to his ear and kept talking.

Everyone in the room decided they made a striking couple and felt, considering what they knew about Sibyl and what they’d seen of her man, that they were the perfect match.

“I think we know who our anonymous donor is,” Tina whispered to her husband and Kyle nodded.

“I’m writing to her mother,” Mrs. Griffith declared.

“I’m going to adopt him too,” Annie shouted.

And then fifteen taxis started arriving at the Centre.

Chapter Fifteen

Tranquilliser Dart

Colin was in his office on his phone

He’d gone back to Bristol after visiting Sibyl at the Community Centre to return phone calls and make certain the incredible ass who drove the minibus was, indeed, sacked (which, as Colin threatened, a number of councillors assured him, he would be, first thing in the morning).

Once he’d heard the news from the bus driver’s line manager directly, Colin felt a strange, intensely pleasant sense of satisfaction.

He didn’t question it, he didn’t have time. He had other things to do.

That task completed, Colin also phoned a surveyor to have a look at the Community Centre as a whole. From what he could see, the place was a fire trap, a health hazard and needed significant renovations.

Not to mention better furniture.

And, likely, fumigation.

And finally, he called a contractor, told him to go to the Centre and give Colin a quote on how much it would cost to build an extension so Sibyl could have a decent office, one that didn’t look like a salvage yard.

All of this Colin was going to finance and he didn’t care how much it cost.

It was ridiculous that those people were forced to spend their time in that dilapidated wreck and he certainly wasn’t going to allow Sibyl to do so.

He’d had a few words with the Councillors about that as well.

He wished, two weeks ago, when she’d slapped the briefcase shut on the fifty thousand pounds, that she’d told him then what the money was for.

However, he had to admit, he probably wouldn’t have believed her. She was, on the whole, quite unbelievable.

He’d thought that before Robert Fitzwilliam had told him about her. This feeling solidified after witnessing her in her element at the Centre. He could still see the look of shining adoration in “her girls” eyes as they stared at her and he could hear the esteem in the pensioners’ voices when they spoke to her.