First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Three

Sabrina shoved her overstuffed carry-on under the seat in front of her with a grunt. It shifted a fraction of an inch, barely fitting in the meager space. She sighed and sank down into her window seat overlooking the wing of the airplane. Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing. In for five, out for five, in for five, out for five, just the way she’d practiced.

You are not going to die today. You are safe in this giant metal projectile that defies the laws of physics. You will not plummet from the sky in a fiery blaze and crash in a flyover state. Not today.

It wasn’t exactly the type of mantra her therapist had recommended but, after everything that happened with her now ex-husband, Sabrina had learned that acknowledging the doomsday scenarios playing in her head was more helpful than pretending they didn’t exist.

She stabbed at the button overhead to turn on the fan above her seat, but all it did was spit out a burst of hot air. As if she wasn’t already sweating to death. Thank God she had the foresight to block out her mother’s voice this morning— Respectable people do not wear sweatpants on an airplane, Sabrina. Flying might have been Sabrina’s own personal version of hell, but at least she was wearing an elastic waistband and a wire-free bra. Could be worse .

“Fucking hell.”

It just got worse.

Sabrina forgot to breathe. She’d know that gruff voice anywhere. The gravel of it scraped across her skin, and she grew lightheaded as his mere presence sucked all the oxygen out of the tiny space.

You are not going to die today.

Opening her eyes, she met the hard stare of Sebastian Graham. He stood in the aisle beside her row, an immovable tower of censure in a three-piece suit. The sharp slash of his eyebrows and slight flare of his nostrils would be comical on any other man, but only made Sebastian more handsome. How was he so beautiful when he was this angry? The silent wrath rolling off him in waves bent the air around him, like the heat rising on the tarmac below.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He arched an eyebrow at her as though the question offended him.

“I mean, you’re going to Vegas. Obviously. But why?” she stammered.

He shook his head and shoved his carry-on into the overhead compartment with an alarming ease. Swearing under his breath, he unbuttoned his suit jacket and dropped into the seat next to her. She pressed herself against the wall of the cabin, as if that half an inch of space could give her enough room to breathe. As if his thigh wasn’t dangerously close to pressing against hers. Why did they even make planes with only two seats together? What happened to three seats in a row?

You are not going to die today. Not from this hunk of metal falling out of the sky and not from Sebastian Graham’s death glare.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina watched as he settled into his seat, put in his earbuds, and rested his head back, his eyes falling closed, without ever answering her question. Clearly, he had no intention of talking to her, even if they were trapped with each other for the next seven hours. What were the odds?

But then she remembered—Aunt Lucy had said the other person going to this convention on behalf of Aster Bay was a “young man” who played bar trivia every week. Sabrina winced as she remembered the hours of Trivial Pursuit she and Sebastian had played in the food pantry break room between stocking shelves with canned soup and packing care packages of mini toiletries.

She placed her hand on his forearm to get his attention. His icy blue eyes flew open and stared at the offending point of contact. She motioned to his ears. With a harsh exhale through his nose, he removed the earbud closest to her and watched her expectantly, but he still didn’t say a word.

“Are you—” She stopped herself, swallowing to bring moisture back to her mouth, and tried again, pulling her hand back into her own lap. “You’re the other rep from the Merchants’ Association.”

His eyes flared slightly in surprise before narrowing at her. “The other ?”

“Aunt Lucy volunteered me.” When he didn’t say anything, she continued, words tumbling over themselves. “I moved back. In. With her. I want to open a pottery studio, like the one I had in Maine. Kennebunkport. That’s where I’ve been, the last few years at least. Not that you asked. But I was. And I had a studio there. And a—” She stopped herself. No need to dump all your baggage at his feet. “But now I’m here and I want another one. Studio, that is. And the Merchants’ Association hasn’t approved my application yet for a permit to open. Apparently, pottery’s controversial, which is really saying something, if you think about it, in a town that already has a lingerie store, a boudoir studio, and a sex toy store.”

Her face heated at the mention of the sex toy store, filthy fantasies that had kept her company since she’d spotted him at the Bazaar flashing behind her eyes: Sebastian pressing a toy between her legs, the way he’d punish her for the last ten years with an endless string of orgasms.

You will not think about orgasms while you’re sitting next to him in this death trap.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with a sex toy store. I mean, it really is progressive of the town to welcome a sex shop in the heart of downtown. And quality toys can be hard to find, you know? I mean, maybe you don’t know. I mean, I know .”

A muscle in his jaw jumped, drawing her attention, and she was momentarily fascinated by the movement of the tiny muscles keeping his jaw tightly clenched.

“What was I talking about? Oh! My pottery studio. Aunt Lucy—you remember Aunt Lucy—she told the Merchants’ Association that I’d go to this conference because she thought it would put me in their good graces to get my application approved and no one else wanted to go. Well, no one else except you. Apparently.”

“Apparently.”

She opened her mouth to say something else when the flight attendant at the front of the plane started her speech about seatbelts and how to use the oxygen masks if they should drop from the ceiling of the plane. Sebastian turned his attention to the flight attendant, his laser focus on the safety monologue making it clear that he was done listening to her babble. Sabrina slunk down in her seat, trying to absorb the information, but it all sounded like white noise. And the less she heard, the more panic clawed at her throat. How would she inflate the oxygen mask if she hadn’t heard the directions? Was she supposed to pull down and then put it on, or put it on and then pull down? And what was that about the seat cushion?

You are not going to die today. You are not going to die today. You are not going to die today.

Unless there’s a sudden loss of cabin pressure and you can’t figure out how to put the oxygen mask on. Or the plane crash lands in water and you drown before you figure out how to use the flotation device.

Are we even going to fly over water? A flotation device won’t help me if we crash in a field.

Which is more likely to cause fatalities—going down nose first into a Great Lake or a corn field?

Holy shit, what if I die today?

“Sabrina!”

Sebastian’s harsh bark pulled her attention, and she jerked her head towards him, but she didn’t see him. Not really.

You are not going to die today. You are not going to die today.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. “Breathe,” he ordered, and then began counting, a slow chanting of “one two three four five” over and over.

As her breathing slowed and air rushed into her lungs, embarrassment crept in. It had been months since she’d had a panic attack. Maybe she should have listened to her therapist about the inane, happy mantras instead of ones that included words like “death trap” and “fiery blaze.”

“Everyone alright over here?” the cheery voice of the flight attendant asked from the aisle.

Baz kept his eyes locked on Sabrina’s, waiting for her to answer.

“Y-yes,” she stammered. “I’m fine.”

The flight attendant’s plastic smile flickered towards Sebastian, looking for confirmation.

“Fine,” he grunted.

“Alright,” the flight attendant said with a smile. “Then please fasten your seatbelt, ma’am. We’ll be taking off in a few moments.”

She reluctantly pulled her hand away from the heat of Sebastian’s chest. Her fingers were clumsy as they fumbled with the belt buckle .

“Christ’s sake,” he muttered, reaching over and buckling her seatbelt with a metallic clang.

“Thank you.”

The plane jolted as it started down the tarmac and, before she realized what she was doing, she reached over the arm rest and grasped his hand in hers, clinging to him.

I can’t die today. I can’t die when Sebastian thinks I ruined his life.

He stared at their interlocked hands and she knew she should release him, but she couldn’t.

“You are not going to die today,” he said in a low, deep voice.

“What?”

“You said, ‘I can’t die today.’”

Her heart sank into her stomach. She’d said that out loud?

“You’re right. You are not dying today. You said it yourself. You can’t die while I think you ruined my life.”

Oh fuck. Stupid mantras.

With his free hand, he replaced his earbuds, then closed his eyes and leaned back as if he’d go to sleep. “And you did ruin my life. So obviously you cannot die today.”

***

“Check again.” Baz gritted his teeth and used every ounce of his self-control not to reach across the concierge desk and throttle the poor sap who had the misfortune of checking him into the hotel.

The baby-faced twenty-something wiped a bead of sweat away with the back of his forearm before typing furiously, each clack of the keys twisting his face into a deeper grimace. “I’m sorry, sir. Both of your names are in the system but there’s only one room. Whoever booked your reservation—”

“Fuck!” Baz slammed his fist down on the desk, causing the kid to jump.

He spun away, raking his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t this kid’s fault that Norm was a cheap asshole. He pulled his phone from his pocket and fired off a text to the President of the Merchants’ Association, staring at the screen in stunned silence as the status changed from ‘delivered’ to ‘read’ and still no reply came.

The bastard left me on read.

“Are there any other available rooms?” Sabrina asked the desk agent with a conciliatory smile.

“Yes, ma’am. I could put you in a junior suite for six hundred dollars per night.”

“Per night?” Sabrina squeaked. “That’s—”

“Too fucking expensive,” Baz grunted.

The kid winced. “There are several conferences in the hotel at the moment, sir. The only rooms I have left are suites. But the room reserved for you both does have a pull-out couch. You could—”

“That will be fine.” Sabrina shot a wary glance towards Baz.

Stop being an asshole. You let her sleep on your shoulder on the plane, but you can’t share a room with her in the hotel? Fucking hypocrite.

With any luck he’d meet someone in the hotel bar and need never find out exactly what kind of hell came folded up in a hotel pull-out couch.

He scrubbed his hand over his face, then thrust it out towards the desk agent. “Keys.”

Across the lobby, the elevator doors slid open with a ding and Baz strode across the ostentatious space, determined to put some distance between himself and Sabrina, even if only for a moment. But once he was inside the elevator, pressing his palm to the door to keep it open and watching her struggle to drag her luggage after him, he realized his mistake. Now there was nothing to do but watch her, and if he’d thought she was a menace in her fancy silk blouse at the Bazaar, it was nothing compared to Sabrina Page in loungewear. He cleared his throat and looked away, determined not to focus on the way her chest moved each time she tugged on her bag.

You hate her. Stop looking at her tits.

No sooner had Sabrina joined him in the elevator, than a laughing, drunk couple pushed their way inside as well. They ricocheted off the gilt mirror-like walls of the elevator in their hurry to paw at each other, hardly coming up for air long enough for the man to slam his hand against the button for the twentieth floor. The woman giggled as her partner buried his head in her neck, his hands everywhere. It was like they consumed every bit of air in the elevator, taunting Baz and Sabrina, daring them to watch their ridiculous public display of affection.

Baz inadvertently caught Sabrina’s eye, a blush rising rapidly in her cheeks, and looked away quickly. He didn’t want to know what that blush was about—if she was embarrassed or scandalized or, even worse, turned on. He just wanted to get to their room and forget this day had ever happened.

Their room was on the seventeenth floor and overlooked the strip, the obnoxious neon flashing lights below bleeding in through the thin curtains. After the company in the elevator, their room felt enormous. Baz dropped his bag on the pull-out couch in the corner as Sabrina closed the door behind them.

“Sorry about this,” she said over the sound of her bag dragging across the carpet.

Baz rolled his eyes and snatched her bag from her grasp, lifting it easily and placing it on the luggage rack in the corner. “Did you make the reservation?”

“No.”

“Then don’t fucking apologize for things you didn’t do.”

She chuckled under her breath as she unzipped her bag, digging out a toiletry kit. “Some things never change.” He narrowed his eyes at her, but that only served to make her laugh more. “ You always did have to be the grumpiest guy in the room.”

“Do not,” he muttered.

She pressed her lips together to suppress her laughter, but her eyes sparkled as if to say, told you so.

“I need a drink.” He stalked across the room to the mini bar, not caring that a single glass of Scotch was about to cost him the same as a steak dinner back home.

Before he could untwist the cap, Sabrina said, “Why don’t we go down to one of the bars? I wouldn’t say no to a margarita after that flight.”

This Sabrina, the one who smiled charmingly at desk agents and made fun of his attitude, was more familiar than the woman who’d gripped his hand on the plane like he was the only thing between her and certain doom. He’d never known Sabrina to be afraid of flying. All those vacations she’d talked about wanting to take, the trips to Egypt and Peru she’d planned in between unloading boxes of cereal at the food pantry, they all required lengthy flights. But this woman—both the version that panicked on the tarmac and the one who confidently spoke to customer service employees—was different from the girl he’d known all those years ago.

Different and yet unsettlingly familiar.

Baz frowned at the bottle in his hand before putting it back in the mini bar. The sight of her answering smile hit him squarely in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. There had been a time when she’d smiled at him constantly, when he’d gone out of his way to make her smile, when he’d known a thousand ways to paint that particular expression on her face. But it had been a decade since he’d last felt its warmth directed at him. A decade since he’d cared.

Liar.

“Give me five minutes to freshen up,” she said as she disappeared into the bathroom.

Freshen up was apparently secret girl code for change out of her cotton loungewear and pour herself into a little black dress that showed off her legs and cleavage in a display designed to drive men out of their minds. A gold chain around her neck disappeared down the front of her dress and he found himself wondering what was on the end of that chain.

Don’t look at her tits.

But when had she gotten curves like that, the kind that begged for his hands? When had Sabrina Page, the quirky kid at the food pantry and his almost sister-in-law, turned into this knockout with tits that defied gravity and legs he wanted to feel wrapped around his waist? If she were any other woman, he would have already made filthy promises to her, every one of which he would make good on. If she were any other woman—

“Ready?” she asked, smoothing her hands over her thighs to straighten the dress.

Baz could think of a thousand things he was ready for in that moment, none of which involved leaving that hotel room and all of which ended with her lipstick smeared all over his cock.

Fuck. Stop.

Sabrina Page is the last person you can think about that way.

“Sebastian?” she asked, her brow wrinkling.

Jesus Christ, why did he like the way she said his name so much? If anyone else insisted on calling him by his given name he’d bite their head off. But he liked the sound of the consonants on her lips.

“Let’s go,” he grunted, buttoning his suit jacket and striding out of the room.

***

The bar in the hotel lobby was crowded, but they found a small booth in the corner and ordered their drinks. Sabrina practically clapped when her margarita arrived. She took a slow sip, her tongue darting out to lick salt off the rim. That flash of pink was how Baz knew he was in hell. Their plane had fallen from the sky after all and he was in his own personal hell watching Sabrina Page’s tongue flick in and out of her mouth. He threw back half his drink in one sip.

What is wrong with you? You hate this woman.

Didn’t he?

“Nice suit,” she said.

He grunted, because what the fuck was that supposed to mean? “Nice dress.”

“I don’t remember you wearing suits.” When he didn’t answer, she leaned forward, a grin tugging at her lips. “Do you even own jeans anymore, or is it all suits and Darth Vader costumes now?”

“Do you always dress like your mother?” he shot back. She flinched slightly at his words and he turned away. You are such an asshole. “ Your mom wouldn’t have worn spandex on a plane,” he conceded.

She chuckled. “No, she definitely would not.

They sat in silence for another few minutes, Baz trying not to think about why he cared what she thought of his wardrobe and Sabrina seemingly focused on her drink.

“The way I see it, we have two options.” Sabrina twisted the stem of her margarita glass between two fingers, leaving a widening circle of condensation on the table. “We can spend the next few days walking on eggshells, with you grunting and scowling and me babbling like an anxious lunatic, or we can actually talk about what happened.”

“When you broke up my wedding,” he said.

She huffed out a breath. “It’s not that simple.”

“You told your sister not to marry me.”

Her face went pale and she swallowed, rolling those distracting bright red lips over each other. “I did.”

“Seems simple to me.”

Sabrina took a long sip from her margarita, that fucking tongue gliding over her lips to catch the last bits of salt and tequila. She threw a nervous glance his way and he almost felt bad for being such a jerk.

Almost.

He let himself sink down in the booth and drank his Scotch, his thighs spreading as he adopted a posture far more casual than he felt. Let her think it no longer bothered him, that her betrayal on what should have been the happiest day of his life didn’t still sting. That he hadn’t spent ten fucking years wondering what he had done wrong.

Except he didn’t have to wonder. He’d been born into a middle-class family in a middle-class town where he worked a middle-class job. He went to college on loans that would take him too long to pay off and he scraped and clawed and worked for every damn thing he had. He didn’t belong on the golf course at the country club and he sure as fuck didn’t fit in with the Pages, with their generational wealth and all the moral high ground they thought came with it.

He hadn’t been good enough. That was his crime.

He just hadn’t thought Sabrina had felt that way.

So damn-fucking-right he wore suits now. He wasn’t the loser her family had thought he was anymore. He’d made something of himself, and if he wanted to broadcast that to the entire goddamn world through a wardrobe full of tailored business wear, he would.

Sabrina’s eyes raked over him, something like interest sparking in their depths as they lingered on the pull of his suit jacket over his biceps and the flat planes of his stomach. He bit back a smirk.

Good . He wanted her to want him, the guy who hadn’t been good enough to marry her sister. Wanted her to sit there in that fucking tease of a dress and squirm thinking about all the things he could do to make her scream his name.

If he didn’t hate her, that is .

“You’re different,” she said, sadness pulling at the corners of her mouth.

“It’s been ten years.”

“No, it’s not that. You didn’t use to be this…cold.”

He grunted, draining his drink.

“The morning of your wedding—”

“We’re not talking about this.”

“Sebastian, you deserve to know. That morning—”

“I’m not fucking talking about this,” he growled. “It won’t change anything.”

“It might.”

“What would it change?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Sabrina.” He dug a handful of bills out of his wallet and tossed them on the table as he got to his feet, buttoning his suit jacket. “I don’t feel anything for you at all.”