‘It’s not about pride, Mark.’
‘Yes, it is!’ he flared back bitterly. ‘You’ve always been the same. You can’t ask for help. You always have to do things the hard way. Well, it’s easy for you to have pride—you can walk out of here.’
Her brother held her eyes for ten silent reproachful seconds before he turned his face to the wall.
‘Mark, I’m sorry.’
Almost in tears, Mari left five minutes later, Mark still refusing point-blank to speak to her. He hadn’t given her the silent treatment since they were children, and then sometimes he had kept it up for days.
* * *
As she walked along the hospital corridors Mari struggled to think past the awful sense of helplessness. She couldn’t get the image of the silent reproach in her brother’s eyes out of her head and it left her with a sick sense of helplessness that was crushing.
The doctor had caught Mari before she left the ward. She had really struggled to respond positively when he’d pronounced himself cautiously optimistic about her brother’s prognosis; he’d gone on to emphasise how important a positive mental attitude was in these cases and how easy it was for patients to become depressed.
Outside she took several deep gulps of fresh air. Mark was right: she could go home but he couldn’t.
As much as she loved her twin she was perfectly aware that his impatience meant he always went for the quick fix. Their foster parents used to tell him there was no magic pill that cut out the hard work, but now he was convinced there was a magic pill. A carrot had been dangled and he couldn’t have it, but while he knew it was there he’d never settle for hard slog.
Lost in her own thoughts, she barely noticed the drizzle that had begun to fall as she cut across the bay reserved for ambulances, and then across a half-empty area with reserved parking spaces, people who were too important to make the long trek to the overflow parking area for the hospitals.
‘So how was your brother?’
Mari let out a shriek as the tall figure vaulted from a low-slung car that had power statement written all over it.
Had he been waiting for her? It didn’t matter—she had a chance to tell him what she thought of him.
‘Are you some sort of sadist?’
The sight of her walking out of the building had shaken loose an emotion that he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. Her body language had been so defeated, her slender shoulders so hunched she had looked as though it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other.
The contrast now as she stared up at him, blue eyes blazing, bosom heaving, her sensational, soft, full lips quivering with emotion as she launched into attack mode, was dramatic.
Seb was a man who valued control and moderation but she really was made for full-blown passionate excess... She was stunning, but then so was a hurricane, and he had never felt the desire to chase one or throw himself blindly into its path. Encounters with hurricanes needed to be carefully planned.
‘I like that in you—you waste no time on pleasantries. You get right to the point. I’m the same way myself,’ he drawled. ‘It saves so much time.’ He held open the door of his car, revealing the plush leather-clad interior. ‘Do you want to sit down and catch your breath?’
‘You don’t make me breathless!’ Exasperated that her response had managed to imply the exact opposite, she gritted her teeth.
‘Really?’
She stuck out her chin and stubbornly held his eyes. ‘Yes, really.’
‘I must be losing my touch.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. You seem to be on top form,’ she sneered angrily. ‘Presumably seeing my brother in a hospital bed wasn’t good or rather bad enough for you? No, you have to raise his hopes and leave me to crush them,’ she choked, fighting back a sudden sob and finishing on a shaky quiver of husky despair. ‘I’m sick of being the bad guy.’
Catching the thoughtful expression in his watchful dark eyes, she immediately regretted the bitter addition, and you couldn’t really compare this situation with all the little things like telling Mark he couldn’t ask their foster parents for the expensive trainers he wanted when they were kids.
‘Then why do you let him do it?’
Thrown off balance by the soft question, she stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Why do you let your brother play you like...? Whichever way you look at it, it isn’t healthy—a grown man letting his sister fight his battles.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s emasculating, not to mention manipulative.’
The casually voiced observation whipped angry colour into her cheeks. ‘Are you calling me manipulative?’ she asked in a low, dangerous voice.
‘No, I’m calling your brother manipulative.’
Immediately defensive, Mari lifted her chin. ‘My brother didn’t...doesn’t know about me crashing your wedding.’ She bit her lip and added with a husky question mark, ‘I’d like it to stay that way?’
This was not news to Seb, who considered himself a pretty good judge and had recognised the shallow insincerity behind Mark’s smile the moment they had met. If the brother had known he had no doubt the younger man would have immediately tried to distance himself from his sister’s actions.
‘So you’re asking a favour from me...?’
She shrugged and said in a flat little voice, ‘Stupid idea.’
Experiencing an inexplicable impulse to live down to her expectations of him, he almost asked, ‘What’s it worth?’
Instead he found himself extending his hand.
Not in the plan, Seb, said the voice in his head.
Mari drew a tense breath but didn’t step back. She couldn’t—her feet were nailed to the floor. She stood there quivering as he touched her cheek, only lightly with his forefinger, but there was an element of compulsion about the way he drew a line down the soft downy curve of her cheek, his eyes following the action—then he repeated it.
‘You think I put a price on everything?’
Hot desire pulsed through her body. Her response to the casual intimacy was frightening, exciting and humiliating all at once. It was so tiring fighting, not just him but the way he made her feel. For a split second she let herself wonder what it would be like to stop fighting.
‘Don’t you?’ she asked, her reaction as his hand fell away ambivalent at best.
‘I won’t tell your brother about your wedding-crashing exploits.’
‘Thank you.’ Her relief was heartfelt, but her worried frown lingered. He said that now, but what if he changed his mind?
‘Don’t worry, I’m considered a man of my word.’ He saw her eyes widen in alarm and gave a low chuckle. ‘You really should never ever play poker.’ Unless it was not for money and with him, he thought, warming quite literally to the idea of a slow striptease.
‘I know Mark is bound to find out sometime,’ she admitted. ‘But it would be easier later. He’s not even speaking to me right now.’
‘You know, if you’re not careful you’ll spend your life—’ He shook his head and finished abruptly. ‘No, correction, you won’t have a life of your own.’ The thought made him angry.
Confused by the strength of the disapproval she could feel coming off him in waves, she arched an interrogative brow. ‘And you care why exactly?’
A startled look chased across his lean face. ‘I don’t,’