Chapter
Fourteen
Laura took one look at the weed-choked yard,
littered with broken toys, junked auto parts, and an old sofa with
ripped cushions and a missing leg, and knew this had to be the
right house. When she started up the front walk, Sebastian came
trotting around the corner of the house.
“He ducked in the back door and locked
it,” he said and went up the front steps two at a
time.
Laura reached the porch as Sebastian
put a shoulder to the door and forced it open. When he swung the
door wide, she caught a glimpse of the boy racing toward the rear
of the house, but it was enough.
“That’s the Mitchell boy,” Laura said
in surprise.
Sebastian hesitated in the doorway. “Do
you know the family?”
“Not really. I had a run-in with his
father a week or so ago.” Remembering the man’s hot temper, Laura
stepped cautiously into the house and set the girl on the floor.
She immediately toddled over to a bedraggled-looking doll on the
living room’s floor and picked it up. “Hello!” Laura called.
“Anybody home?”
Beyond some rustling movement coming
from the rear of the house, there was only silence. Laura ventured
a little farther into the room. She muttered to Sebastian, “I
wouldn’t be surprised if the swine hasn’t gone off somewhere and
left the children to fend for themselves.”
Sensing Laura’s wariness, Sebastian
made a thorough visual inspection of the areas within their view.
“Is there a mother?”
“She’s probably working,” Laura said
and bent down to the little girl. “Where’s your daddy,
sweetheart?”
The little girl immediately lost all
expression and backed away from Laura, turned and dashed off to sit
against the wall next to an old armchair.
“He knocks you around, too, does he?”
Laura concluded, her dislike of the man deepening to an anger. She
straightened. “This time I am going to report him. Do you see a
phone?”
“No.” More sounds came from the rear.
Sebastian listened for a moment, then moved toward them. “I think
I’ll see what our little thief is doing.”
Laura followed him into a narrow hall
that led to the back of the house. The doorway to the bathroom
stood open. She glanced in, but saw nothing but a pile of dirty
towels and discarded clothes.
The next door was shut. Sebastian
pushed it open. Looking past him, Laura saw the unmade bed. She was
almost sorry Mitchell wasn’t in it.
Sebastian swore under his breath and
charged into the room. “What’s wrong?” The question was barely out
of her mouth when Laura saw a pair of slim bare legs, a woman’s
legs, on the floor near the foot of the bed.
Alarm shot through her as she pushed
into the room. By the time Laura reached the fallen woman,
Sebastian was already crouched beside her, his fingers pressed
against the inside of her wrist, checking for a pulse.
Her stomach lurched sickeningly when
Laura saw the woman’s face. There was little about it that
resembled the woman she’d seen slipping food into Mitchell’s truck
the day of the auction. Her features were distorted by dark,
purpling bruises that marked nearly every inch of them. One eye was
swollen completely shut, and there was dried blood on her chin from
a severely cut lip, partially covered by an inexpertly applied
Band-Aid with stars scattered over it, the kind meant for a
child.
When Sebastian gently lowered the
woman’s arm to her side, Laura asked, “Is she—”
“No. Her pulse is strong. Her breathing
is steady. But she’s been severely beaten, mostly about the face,
it appears, although there is some bruising on her
arms.”
“And I know exactly who did it,” Laura
stated, giving rise to the anger that had been simmering ever since
she realized Mitchell lived in this house.
“What did you say their name
is?”
“Their last name is Mitchell. That’s
all I know.”
Sebastian bent close to the woman.
“Mrs. Mitchell, can you hear me?” He gave her shoulder a gentle
nudge. “Mrs. Mitchell?” The undamaged eye fluttered open, then
closed with the release of a low moan. Sebastian tried again to
rouse her. “Mrs. Mitchell!”
Again she opened the one eye. This time
it stayed open as the woman attempted to focus on Sebastian. “Who .
. . ?” The movement of a cut lip must have produced an instant jab
of pain as her hand moved shakily to her face.
“I’m a friend of the Calders,” he
answered, knowing his own name would be meaningless to
her.
The woman’s obvious pain was more than
Laura could take. “I’m going to find a phone and call for
help.”
As she started to turn away, the
woman’s voice lifted to stop her. “No, don’t!”
There was just enough strength in her
voice to make Laura pause. “You’ve been badly hurt.”
“No. No, I’m all right,” she mumbled
and made a weak attempt to rise.
Sebastian checked her attempt, warning,
“Careful. You may have some internal injuries.”
“No.” Her hand trembled over the
swollen surfaces of her bruised cheek and eye. “My face . . .
that’s all.” She directed a pleading look at Laura. “Don’t call
anyone. Please.”
The appeal was so poignant that Laura
was torn between doing what she knew was right and giving in to the
woman’s wishes. Sebastian delayed the moment of
decision.
“Let’s get her off the floor and onto
the bed.” He nodded in the direction of the unmade bed and the
table lamp that lay atop it, its shade dented and askew.
“Straighten the covers, will you?”
“Of course.” Laura moved quickly to
retrieve the lamp and set it on the bedside table, leaving the
shade atilt for the time being, while Sebastian cradled the slight
woman in his arms.
The bedcovers were a tangled mess.
Rather than take the time to straighten them out, Laura merely
threw them back to expose the bottom sheet and moved out of
Sebastian’s way. When he gently lowered the woman onto the
mattress, Laura hurriedly plumped a pillow and slipped it under her
head, her heart tearing and her anger growing at the little sounds
of pain the woman attempted to smother.
Sebastian sat on the edge of the bed
next to the woman, his gaze examining her again. “You really should
have a professional assess your injuries, Mrs. Mitchell. You could
very well be concussed.”
A tear trickled from the corner of her
eye. “No, please.” The words were a sob. Then a look of panic
flashed in her face, and again she attempted to rise. “My
babies—”
“Your children are fine.” It required
no great amount of pressure for Sebastian to force her to lie
flat.
“Your daughter is in the living room
playing with her doll,” Laura told her. “And your son”—she turned,
not at all sure where the little thief was until she saw him
standing in the doorway—“is right here.”
The woman relaxed against the mattress
in relief, but it was short-lived as she roused herself again. “I
need to see to them.”
Sebastian wouldn’t hear of it. “First
we need to get you fixed up. There will be time enough later to
tend to the children.”
The woman again settled back, but Laura
suspected her easy acquiescence was based more on her lack of
strength than an acceptance of Sebastian’s reasoning. Sebastian
straightened from the bed, shook the top sheet loose from the
tangled covers, and gently drew it across the woman, then stepped
over to Laura’s side.
“You aren’t really going to listen to
her, are you?” Laura demanded in a hissing whisper.
“What do you suggest?” he countered
smoothly. “Her injuries are undoubtedly painful, but they are
certainly not life-threatening.”
Laura desperately wanted to shoot down
his logic, but the only argument she could summon was a weak one.
“We can’t be certain of that.”
The look he gave her spoke volumes, but
he chose not to offer a direct response. “I’m going to find the
kitchen and get some ice for that eye of hers. Why don’t you get a
wet cloth and clean her up a bit?”
The instant Sebastian moved toward the
doorway, the boy bolted for the living room. Laura couldn’t help
thinking that he was too young to have such a strong instinct for
flight.
She followed Sebastian into the hall
and turned right, toward the bathroom, while he went in search of
the kitchen. She flipped on the bathroom light switch, made a brief
survey of the small, cramped space, and located a linen cupboard
built into the wall next to the bathtub. Dirty laundry, a mix of
clothes and towels, was piled in front of its door. Laura pushed it
out of the way with her foot and opened the door. The shelves were
bare of all except two towels and three washcloths. She took the
top one off the stack and crossed to the sink.
When she turned on the faucet, Laura
noticed the medicine cabinet behind the mirror above the sink. She
swung the mirrored door open and scanned the contents. There, on
the top shelf, was a bottle of disinfectant. She took it down,
found some cotton swabs in a basket sitting on the toilet’s tank
lid, and removed two from the pack.
Armed with a wet washcloth, cotton
swabs, and a bottle of disinfectant, Laura returned to the bedroom,
placed the bottle and cotton swabs on the nightstand and sat down
on the edge of the bed. The woman lay there, not
stirring.
Rather than startle her, Laura said,
“Mrs. Mitchell, I’m going to clean you up a bit.”
As gently as she could, she went to
work on the dried blood crusted on the woman’s chin. At some point
in the process, she sensed she wasn’t alone. She glanced at the
doorway and saw the little boy peering around the doorjamb. He
quickly ducked out of sight.
Seconds after she returned to her task,
Laura sensed his eyes watching her again. This time she didn’t turn
but concentrated instead on the blood trail until she had cleaned
up all of it except for that under the star-studded bandage.
Carefully, Laura peeled it off.
As she went to lay the used bandage on
the nightstand, she glanced at the boy. “Did you put this bandage
on your mother’s cut?” The boy didn’t say a word, just stared back
at her. “That was a very good thing to do.”
Once all the dried blood was removed,
Laura poured disinfectant into the bottle’s lid, saturated the
cotton swab with it, and warned her patient. “This is going to
hurt, Mrs. Mitchell.”
The woman winced noticeably but made no
sound. A sharply indrawn breath came from the boy by the doorway.
After she had treated the deep split in the woman’s lip, Laura used
a clean corner of the wet washcloth to wipe the rest of the woman’s
face.
Almost with the first touch of the
cloth on her bruised skin, the woman murmured in a sigh, “That
feels so good.”
Once again, Laura felt the warring
between anger and compassion. “Your husband did this to you, didn’t
he?” she accused.
The woman looked at her, insisting, “He
didn’t mean to.”
“I’ll just bet he didn’t,” Laura
muttered with heat.
“You don’t understand,” the woman
protested.
“No, and I never will.” She couldn’t
bring herself to pretend otherwise.
Approaching footsteps sent the boy
scurrying to the living room again. Laura stood up when Sebastian
entered the room, carrying a sealable plastic bag filled with ice
cubes and water. During the brief moment when their eyes met, Laura
picked up something, but she couldn’t tell if it was frustration or
exasperation.
“This should help the swelling, Mrs.
Mitchell.” He eased the ice bag onto her black eye and used the
extra pillow to prop it in place.
“Thank you,” the woman murmured and
searched out Laura with her other eye. “Thank you
both.”
“You lie there and rest a bit,”
Sebastian said and took Laura by the arm, turning her toward the
door.
The woman reacted with a flash of
panic. “You aren’t going to call anybody, are you? Please,
I—”
“We won’t. I promise,” Sebastian
assured her. “Lie still. And keep that ice bag on your
eye.”
The woman subsided against the pillow,
but her worried glance followed them when Sebastian escorted Laura
from the room. Laura studied the grim set of Sebastian’s
mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“I suspect I know what the boy stole
from Mrs. Fedderson,” he stated. “A sack of marshmallows. Would you
care to guess why?”
Laura had a bitter feeling that she
knew the answer. “He was hungry.”
“Precisely,” he said, his speech cold
and clipped. “The shelves in that kitchen are regrettably bare. No
milk, no bread, no tins—in fact, there is little beyond flour,
salt, cooking oil, a few spices, and a package of dried
beans.”
“I think Mitchell’s been out of work
for some time.”
“The cause is irrelevant. Those
children need food.” Sebastian made it a flat statement of fact.
“You stay here while I go to Fedderson’s and pick up some groceries
for them.”
“Here.” Laura dug into her purse and
pulled out the truck keys. “You might as well drive the truck back.
It’ll save carrying the groceries all this way.” She hesitated.
“How are you fixed for cash?”
There was a touch of drollness in his
crooked smile. “I’m not in the poorhouse yet.”
The left-handed reference to his
current financial straits prompted Laura to extract a pair of
twenty-dollar bills from her wallet. “I’ll contribute to the cause
just the same.” She pushed the money and the keys into his hand as
the little girl waddled past them into the bedroom, leaving the
stench of a soiled diaper in her wake. Laura wrinkled her nose at
the odor. “Better pick up some disposable diapers, too. There’s one
on top of the dresser but it’s probably the last.”
Sebastian hesitated. “On second
thought, perhaps you should go instead. If the husband should come
home and find you—”
“He wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me.”
Laura pushed her chin forward at a combative angle, her dark eyes
snapping with temper.
The corners of his mouth twitched. “I
am quite certain you are more than a match for him, but I prefer
not to take the risk.”
“He would be twice as angry to find a
strange man in his house,” Laura warned.
His mouth curved in one of those lazy,
sexy smiles. “I do believe you are concerned for my well-being. How
encouraging.”
“I was merely thinking of how difficult
it would be for you to attract the interest of some wealthy woman
if that handsome face of yours is bashed in.” Laura
countered.
“You find it handsome, do you?” Teasing
laughter danced in his eyes, a match to the amused smugness of his
smile.
“Too bad it’s all you have to offer,”
Laura retorted, enjoying the playful banter that had them matching
wits.
“It isn’t all,”
he stressed suggestively and tucked both the money and the keys
into her purse before adding more bills from his pocket. “Go to the
store. There will be a better time to jog your
memory.”
Desire tingled through Laura at the
look of promise he gave her. Rather than let him see it, she
challenged instead, “Why are you so insistent on staying here? Are
you hoping that I’ll regard you as brave and heroic?”
“Perhaps it’s simply that I suspect you
don’t have a clue how to change a soiled nappy.”
It took her a second to remember that
“nappy” was the English term for diaper. “And you do?” She eyed him
skeptically.
“I had some experience at it when my
nephews were small,” he replied.
“Really? I would have thought that was
the nanny’s job.”
“Even a nanny is entitled to a free
day. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“How incredibly domestic you sound,”
Laura mocked.
Sebastian sighed in disappointment.
“You were supposed to remark on what an excellent husband I would
make.”
“You would—for somebody else,” she
added naughtily. “But you have convinced me. You can stay here and
deal with the soiled nappy; I’ll go to the store.” Smiling, she
touched his cheek in farewell and headed for the door.
It was a good forty-five minutes later
when Laura parked the pickup in front of the house, collected two
sacks of groceries from the back of the truck, and started up the
front walk. Sebastian was at the front door, holding it open for
her to pass through.
“There’s more in the back of the
truck,” she told him as she went by.
One eyebrow arched at the sight of the
half dozen sacks that remained. “Did you buy out the
store?”
“You were the one who said the shelves
were bare,” Laura replied over her shoulder. “Where’s the
kitchen?”
“Straight back.”
The little girl came running to meet
her, swinging the bedraggled doll by its arm. Gone were the
pajamas, the dirty face, and the diaper smell. Even her hair had
been combed and pulled back from her face by a pair of pink
barrettes that matched the pink dress she wore.
The change in the little girl’s
appearance wasn’t the only thing Laura noticed as she passed
through the front of the house. The living room had been tidied,
the clutter picked up, books and magazines stacked neatly on the
coffee table, and the toys stowed in a basket.
When she reached the kitchen, Laura
suspected that Sebastian’s hand had been at work there as well.
Both the countertops and table were cleared. She shoved one grocery
sack onto the counter and set the other one beside it, then left to
bring more, passing Sebastian along the way.
It required two trips by each of them
to unload the truck. When Laura returned from the second trip, she
caught the boy perched on the counter, trying to rip open a bag of
potato chips. He jumped to the floor the instant he saw her. Before
he could run off with his prize, Laura grabbed the back of his
shirt collar.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Without losing her
grip on the boy, she snatched the bag from his hand, hauled one of
the kitchen chairs up to the sink counter, and lifted him onto it.
“I see Sebastian wasn’t able to corral you. Before you eat
anything, you’re going to wash those dirty hands.” She handed him a
bar of soap and turned on the faucet. When he threw her a measuring
look, she responded with a no-nonsense one of her own. “I mean
it.”
Deciding that she did, he pushed his
hands under the water. While he went about washing his hands, Laura
opened the sack of chips, shook a few into a bowl, and set it on
the kitchen table.
“That’s all you can have for now,” she
told him. “And be sure to share with your sister.”
Sebastian joined her in the kitchen
with the last two sacks, his glance sliding to the boy. “I see he
came out of hiding.”
“I caught him trying to steal the bag
of potato chips.” She gave the boy a towel to use to dry his hands
and turned off the faucet. After two quick wipes on the towel, the
boy jumped off the chair and ran to the table.
“According to the little girl, his name
is Mike,” Sebastian murmured as he began removing the food items
from the sacks. “Her name is Amy.”
“She looks like an Amy—now.” Laura used
the pause to lend emphasis to the latter word, then sent him a
teasing glance. “Where did you learn to fix a little girl’s hair?
Certainly not from looking after your nephews.”
“Would you believe that was my first
attempt?”
“Really?” she said, admitting to a
little surprise.
“It was. Although”—Sebastian paused to
briefly comb his fingers into her hair—“I have played with a
woman’s hair on occasion. It can be quite stimulating. Remind me to
demonstrate.”
She laughed in her throat even as her
pulse quickened. “You never give up, do you?”
“Like England’s illustrious statesman,
Winston Churchill, I can be very tenacious.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Laura
warned lightly and flashed her engagement ring as a
reminder.
“Perhaps,” Sebastian replied, clearly
unconvinced.
Laura carried a gallon jug of milk to
the refrigerator. “If you come across a package of hot dogs, leave
them out. Every child I’ve ever known loves them. I thought we
could fix some for lunch and heat one of those cans of soup for
Mrs. Mitchell.”
As soon as the groceries were put away,
the two of them set about fixing lunch for the children. Carrot
sticks, fresh grapes, and milk rounded out the meal of hot dogs and
chips. Sebastian buckled the little girl in her high chair while
Laura poured some vegetable beef soup into an oversized mug she
found in the cupboard.
“If you can handle things here, I’ll
take this in to Mrs. Mitchell,” she told Sebastian.
“I believe I can manage,” he replied
and deftly righted the little girl’s drink cup before it toppled
off the tray and onto the floor.
Confident that he could, Laura exited
the kitchen, soup mug in hand. Briefly she tried to visualize Boone
in Sebastian’s place, but it was simply too ludicrous. If Boone had
been with her, he would have handled the situation differently: the
authorities would have been called, the injured woman whisked off
to the nearest medical facility, and the children turned over to a
social service agency. He wouldn’t have seen the need to involve
himself personally. Laura wasn’t entirely sure why she
had.
The woman was awake when Laura entered
the bedroom. “I brought you some soup,” she told her.
“Thanks.” The woman pushed herself up
into a sitting position, but it was obvious that she was in
pain.
Laura set the mug on the table and
helped the woman adjust the propping pillows behind her. “Sebastian
mentioned he gave you a couple aspirins. Did they help
any?”
“A little. I’ll be fine, though,” she
added hastily.
The anger came back for the man who
inflicted this abuse on her. “I hope you feel better than you
look.” Laura didn’t try to soften the sharp edge of her voice as
she placed the mug in the woman’s hands. “Can you manage to feed
yourself?”
The woman nodded in answer and dipped
the spoon into the soup. Laura watched her take the first few
spoonfuls. Then the effort seemed to exhaust the woman. She rescued
the soup mug from the woman’s loosening grip and set it on the
table.
“Tell me when you want some more, Mrs .
. .” she began, then stopped. “It doesn’t feel right to keep
calling you Mrs. Mitchell. What’s your first name?”
“Gail.”
“Mine’s Laura.” Rather than tower over
her, Laura settled onto the edge of the bed.
The woman named Gail made a weak
attempt at a smile, hesitated, then said, “He didn’t mean to hurt
me, you know. Gary is really a good, kind man.”
“Maybe I should bring you a mirror so
you can see what he did to you,” Laura suggested dryly. “There
isn’t much good or kind about it.”
“He didn’t mean to,” she insisted
again. “He’d been drinking. It never would have happened if he
hadn’t.”
“How often is he sober?” Laura
challenged, irritated at the way the woman kept defending this
animal who masqueraded as a man.
Avoiding a direct answer, Gail plucked
at the top sheet. “None of this started until the mine closed.
Before that he was a wonderful, loving husband and father.” She let
her head rest against the headboard and gazed at the ceiling as if
recalling better times. “We were going to leave when everybody else
did, but neither one of us wanted to go back to the city, and the
county had an opening in the road maintenance department. Gary was
sure he was going to get the job. Every month they kept saying next
month. In the end they didn’t hire anyone. Budget problems, they
said. By then we had used up what little savings we had. Then his
unemployment insurance ran out.”
It wasn’t hard to guess what happened
next. “And he started drinking.”
Instantly defensive, she met Laura’s
skeptical gaze. “Gary is a proud man. You have no idea how much it
hurts not to be able to take care of his family.”
Laura wouldn’t relent in her opinion of
the man. “Is that the reason your cupboards were bare? He was too
proud to apply for food stamps?”
The woman turned her face away. “We get
food stamps.”
The statement confused Laura, but only
for a second. “Let me guess: he sold them for cash so he could buy
booze?”
“No,” she denied, stung by the remark.
“He needed gas money for the truck so he could go look for a
job.”
“Where? At Harry’s?” It was tough talk,
but Laura was determined to open the woman’s eyes.
Tears welled. “He goes there sometimes.
You can’t expect him to sit at home all the time.”
“And when he goes there, he drinks,
then comes home and beats on you.”
“It isn’t like that. Not always.” Her
voice had a sob in it. “He loves me.”
“His kind of love you don’t need,”
Laura stated, then tried another tactic. “Gail, this isn’t good—not
for you or your children.”
“I know, but”—this time she did sniffle
back a sob—“if he could just find a job, everything would be all
right again. I know it would.”
Personally, Laura had her doubts that a
job would bring about an abrupt change in his behavior. Maybe with
counseling it might in time, but she couldn’t see Mitchell ever
agreeing to that, certainly not voluntarily. It was something a
judge would have to order him to do; even then Laura suspected he
wouldn’t be all that cooperative.
“I’m afraid you’re dreaming, Gail.”
Exasperated with the woman’s loyalty, Laura gave up and reached for
the mug. “More soup?”
In silence the woman downed a few more
spoonfuls. “Where are the children? I can’t hear
them.”
“In the kitchen having lunch. I went
shopping,” Laura informed her, “and restocked your cupboards and
refrigerator.”
“You didn’t have to do that.” But there
was abject gratitude in the look she gave Laura. “We’ll pay you
back as soon as we can.”
“Of course.” But Laura wasn’t about to
hold her breath waiting for that day to come.
The woman started to take another sip
of soup, then returned the spoon to the mug, and pushed aside the
top sheet. “I think I’ll finish the rest of my soup in the kitchen
with the children.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She swung her legs out of bed.
“I’m fine.”
Laura couldn’t help wondering which one
of them she was trying to convince. She waited while Gail changed
into a pair of jeans and an oversized tee, then walked with her to
the kitchen. The boy, Mike, was on his second hot dog when they
arrived.
The little girl was more interested in
the grapes on her plate than the hot dog. She was the only one to
comment on her mother’s appearance, pointing to her face and
saying, “Mama, owie.”
“Yes, Mama has an owie,” Gail confirmed
and sat down at the table with them. She darted a self-conscious
glance at Sebastian but avoided looking at Laura. “It was very good
of you to help us like this. I’m sure there’s somewhere you should
be, and it really isn’t necessary for you to stay. I can manage
now, thanks to both of you.”
“We’ll go—on one condition,” Laura
said, unmoved by the wary and slightly resentful look Gail Mitchell
slid her way. “The next time it even looks like your husband is
going to strike you, you call the police.”
“Our phone’s been
disconnected.”
“That must make it a bit difficult for
a prospective employer to contact your husband about a job,” Laura
murmured, unable to resist getting in another jab.
“Laura is right,” Sebastian said
gently. “Don’t subject yourself to another beating like this. The
next time you could be seriously hurt. Get away from him however
you can, and run to a neighbor or the tavern. But don’t remain
here.”
“All right.”
But Laura had the feeling the woman was
just saying that; she wouldn’t run from the house and leave her
children behind. In her place, Laura wouldn’t, either.
Angered by the hopelessness of the
situation, Laura turned to Sebastian. “We’d better go. Allie will
be wondering where the strawberries are.”
Their leave-taking was brief. Chin high
and temper simmering, Laura exited the house and struck out for the
pickup parked at the street curb.
“There is only so much help you can
give someone, Laura,” Sebastian said in that understanding voice of
his.
She threw him a glare. “Don’t say
another word,” she warned. “Or I’ll haul off and hit you just
because you’re a man.”
Taking her at her word, Sebastian held
his silence and climbed into the truck. After a stop at Fedderson’s
to pick up the flat of strawberries, Laura pointed the pickup
toward the Triple C headquarters, rolled the window down, and let
the hot afternoon wind tunnel into the cab. She rested an elbow
atop the opened window and combed a hand into her wind-whipped hair
to keep its length out of her face while the pickup ate up the
miles.
The speed and the big, empty land
worked to unravel the high tension in her nerves. A long, slow sigh
at last slipped from her.
“Is it safe to assume that your temper
has cooled?” Sebastian queried in a dryly amused
voice.
Absorbed in her own thoughts, Laura
failed to hear his remark. “Sorry, did you say
something?”
“Doing some heavy thinking, were you?”
he guessed.
“Something like that,” she admitted
with a shrug, then eyed him curiously. “What are you going to do if
you should lose Crawford Hall?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth twitched.
“But I give you my solemn oath that I won’t take to drinking and
beating up women.”
It was a frivolous answer to what had
been a serious question, and yet so typical of him that Laura had
to laugh. At the same time, she knew Sebastian had spoken the
truth.
“Do you realize we never ate lunch?”
she asked, suddenly conscious of the emptiness in her
stomach.
“Have a strawberry.” He hand-fed her
one. Just like that, the entire incident at the Mitchell house
seemed to lose much of its frustration. Once again her smile was
carefree.