LITMIR.BIZ

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the instrument at her. “Be my guest.”

      She accepted it warily, still not entirely sure she ought to trust him. But a glance at the illuminated screen showed Hugo’s name and number.

      “Will you for pity’s sake hit Send and get on with it,” Sebastian Caine snapped, noting her reluctance. “It’s a phone, not a bomb. It won’t explode in your hand.”

      Hugo answered on the third ring. “I’m so glad you called, Lily,” he said. “There’s been a slight change in plan—an old back injury’s flared up to give me grief, so my stepson Sebastian’s meeting your flight and driving you up here. He’s about six foot three, dark haired, good-looking so the women tell me, and hard to miss even in a crowd.”

      Add rude, arrogant and condescending, and the description would be complete, Lily thought. “We’ve met,” she said, glaring at Sebastian Caine and itching to wipe the smug expression off his face. “He’s standing in front of me, even as we speak.” Not to mention practically stealing the air I breathe!

      “Excellent! Ask him if we should hold dinner for you.”

      She did so, and could have been forgiven for thinking, from the way Sebastian commandeered the phone and hunched one shoulder away from her, that his answer conveyed information pertinent to national security. His voice carried loud and clear, though, as he said, “Hugo? Better not wait dinner for us. This afternoon’s meeting ran late and I’ve got one more call to make before I head back.”

      Whatever Hugo replied had Sebastian casting her another of his disapproving looks. “I suppose so, if you like that sort of thing,” he eventually said, “but I can’t say I see any startling family resemblance. She could be anybody from anywhere.”

      He made it sound as if she were something unwholesome he’d scraped off the sidewalk! If it weren’t that she had no more sense of direction than a drunken field mouse, she’d have dearly loved to rent her own car and tell him to stick his offer to drive her where it would lodge most uncomfortably. Instead she swallowed her pride and allowed him to hustle her and her baggage out to the parking area.

      Practically sprinting to keep up with him as he plowed his way to where he’d left his car, she asked, “How long will it take to drive to Stentonbridge?”

      “Normally around three hours. Today, because of the weather and delays, more like four or five.”

      To say he sounded ticked off gave grim new meaning to the word understatement. “I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced on my account. I’d have been just as happy to take a train or bus.”

      “None run from here to Stentonbridge and even if one did, Hugo wouldn’t hear of it.” His voice took on a derisive edge. “You’re the long-lost daughter returning to the fold, and he wants you welcomed in style.”

      “It’s rather obvious you don’t share his enthusiasm.”

      He spared her a brief, dismissive glance. “Why should I? Even if you’re who you claim you are—”

      “There’s no even if about it,” she said. “I have documented proof.”

      “Which has yet to be verified as authentic.” He swung the luggage cart to a halt behind a sports car as long, dark and sleekly handsome as its owner, popped open the trunk and started piling her bags inside. “You want any of this stuff in the front with you?”

      “No.”

      “Then since the door’s unlocked, climb in and get settled. I’m in a hurry.”

      “Well, silly me!” she said sweetly. “Here I thought you were merely in training for a decathlon!”

      He raised one winged brow and cast her a look that might have turned a more prudent woman to stone. “Don’t push your luck, Ms. Talbot. You’ve already tried my patience to the limit.”

      “And how have I done that, Sebastian?”

      His pinched nostrils told her exactly what he thought of such untoward familiarity. “You’re here, aren’t you?” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”

      “But I’m not here to see you. In fact, crushing though it might be for you to hear this, I didn’t even know of your existence until ten minutes ago.”

      “You raise an interesting question nonetheless,” he said, slamming closed the trunk and ushering her into the passenger seat with more haste than gallantry before sliding his rangy frame behind the steering wheel. “Why, after all this time, do you want to see Hugo?”

      “He’s my father. What better reason is there?”

      “But why now? If you’re telling the truth, he’s been your father all your life.”

      “I didn’t know that until recently.”

      “Precisely my point, Ms. Talbot. You’ve managed without him for the better part of twenty-six years. You’re well past the point where you need a guardian. There’s no emotional tie between you. So what’s the real reason you’re suddenly sniffing around?”

      He made her sound like an ill-bred bloodhound. “It’s highly personal and not something I choose to share with a total stranger.”

      “There are no secrets between Hugo and me.”

      “Apparently there are,” she said smugly. “Judging by your reaction to my sudden appearance, he never confided to you that he had a daughter waiting in the wings.”

      “Maybe,” Sebastian replied, giving back as good as he got, “because he never missed you. The daughter he does know and love more than compensated for your absence.”

      “I have a…sister?” The concept struck a strangely unsettling, though not unpleasant note. She had been an only child who’d always wanted to be part of a big family, but there hadn’t even been cousins she could be close to. No aunts or uncles, and no grandparents. Just her mother and the man she’d known as her father. “We don’t need anyone else,” he’d often said. “The three of us have each other.”

      Three, that was, until the September day ten months before, when a police officer showed up at her door and told her her parents were among the fatalities of a multivehicle accident on a foggy highway in North Carolina.

      “Half sister,” Sebastian Caine said. “Natalie is Hugo’s child by his second marriage to my mother.”

      “So what does that make you and me?” she asked, aiming to introduce a more cordial tone to the conversation. “Half stepbrother and sister?”

      He cut her off in a voice as cold and sharp as the blade of an ax. “It makes us nothing.”

      “Well, praise heaven!” she replied, stung.

      “Indeed.”

      They’d cleared the airport by then and joined the stream of traffic headed through the pouring rain for downtown Toronto. He was probably a very skilled driver, but the memory of her parents as they’d looked when she’d gone to make a positive identification remained too fresh in her mind, and the way Sebastian Caine zipped around slower vehicles left her bracing herself for disaster.

      “Keep pumping an imaginary brake like that, and you’ll wind up putting your foot through the floor,” he observed, zooming up behind another car with what struck her as cavalier disregard for safety.

      “I don’t fancy ending up in someone else’s trunk, that’s all.”

      He sort of smiled. At least, she supposed that was what the movement of his lips amounted to. “Do I make you nervous, Ms. Talbot?”

      She closed her eyes as he changed lanes and zipped past a moving truck. “Yes.”

      “Then you’re wiser than I expected.”

      Her eyes flew open again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “It means I don’t

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