First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Five

Now

Sabrina stifled another yawn behind her hand as she scribbled notes from the slideshow on the screen at the front of the packed conference room. She wasn’t sure if she was struggling to pay attention to the session on dynamic pricing because math had never been her strong suit, or if it had more to do with the lack of sleep.

She’d gone back to their room after Sebastian left the bar and waited for him to return, flipping through endless cable channels until well after midnight. By the time she finally gave up and went to bed, he still hadn’t returned. But when she woke the next morning, his suitcase had been moved and there was evidence that he’d slept on the couch in the corner without ever bothering to pull it out.

She hadn’t seen him at all yesterday, falling asleep before he returned to the room. But again, this morning, it was clear he’d slipped in and out of their room undetected, the balled-up blanket in the corner of the couch and the smell of his body wash in the bathroom the only clues that he’d been back to the room at all.

She shouldn’t care that he was avoiding her—they’ d avoided each other for the last ten years, hadn’t they? But she also couldn’t deny that his words stung. Somehow his apathy was even worse than his anger. And some part of her, however tiny and irrational, had thought that maybe being on this trip together was a sign. Maybe they could finally hash out what had happened all those years ago and move past it.

But tomorrow they’d fly back to Rhode Island, and they were no closer to reconciling than when they’d arrived.

Around her, conference attendees burst into applause, the lanyards around their necks swinging back and forth as they got to their feet. Shit. Now you’ve missed what he was saying about identifying peak demand times.

Sabrina reluctantly gathered her things. She’d have to hope it was in the slides the presenter had promised to upload to the conference website, or that it overlapped enough with what she’d learned in her undergraduate business administration program that she could wing it. Attending this conference might not get her back into Sebastian’s good graces, but if she learned enough to share with the Aster Bay Merchants’ Association, she might manage to get her pottery studio approved.

She moved with the crowd towards the last session of the conference—a keynote address on leveraging the unique character of your small town to increase tourism. As she approached the auditorium, she spotted Sebastian outside the doors. His suit jacket was slung over his arm, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal tanned and toned forearms, as he spoke with a short, balding man in lime green suspenders. She was transfixed by the ease with which he moved, by the familiarity of it, and yet the awareness that all that ease turned hard and cold when he was around her.

For a moment he looked like the man she used to know, a man who would catch the spiders in the stock room in a paper cup and safely bring them outside, all the while teasing her for being afraid of such a small bug .

God, she missed that man.

Her cell phone buzzed to life in her hand, shaking her from her reverie. Her mother’s name flashed across the screen, and she backed away from the auditorium, ducking into an alcove off the main hallway as she answered the call.

“Can you please explain to me why I had to hear from Aunt Lucy that my youngest daughter has moved to Aster Bay?” her mother asked from the other end of the line.

“Hi, Mom.” Sabrina slumped against the wall of the alcove, setting down her notebook and bag of conference swag on the little side table.

“Answer the question, Sabrina.”

“I was going to tell you once I was settled.” It might have been true. At least, she hadn’t decided not to tell her parents she was in Aster Bay.

Her mother huffed. “When have you ever been settled ?” Sabrina closed her eyes against the jab as her mother barreled ahead. “If I hadn’t called Aunt Lucy to invite her to the Labor Day Party, I never would have known you’d finally decided to move on with your life, though why you chose to go live with an elderly woman instead of coming home to your parents, I’ll never understand.”

You will not dump thirty years of resentment on your mother over the phone. You will not spontaneously combust from holding it in for one more day.

“I like Aster Bay, Mom. I always have.”

“You liked sneaking off to take your art classes when you were supposed to be looking for graduate programs,” her mother snapped

Would she ever live down the sin of embarrassing her parents by not following the prescriptive path they’d set out for her? For preferring working with her hands to sitting behind a desk all day?

“At least now you can put that whole unpleasant chapter in Maine behind you. It will be good to have the whole family together again for the long weekend,” her mother said.

Sabrina’s eyes flew open. “Aunt Lucy said she’d go to the party?”

“No, of course not. She’s elderly , Sabrina. She has no interest in traveling for a party.” Her stomach sank. That meant— “We’re going with a patriotic theme this year. Make sure you wear something suitable. Preferably something blue or white. Red would be terrible with your coloring.”

“Mom, I wasn’t planning on going back to Brookline for the long weekend. You know, Aster Bay has a whole celebration of its own that I thought I might stay for this year.”

Her mother laughed. “Of course, you’re coming home. You know this is the largest social event of the year for our family. How would it look if one of my daughters didn’t attend?”

“How would it look to who ?”

“To everyone! Don’t be obtuse, Sabrina. It’s not flattering.”

You will not hang up on your mother. You will not daydream about ways to sabotage her precious party.

“Oh! I almost forgot,” her mother said. But Sabrina knew better. Maryann Page never forgot anything. “We’ll have a special toast to celebrate Holly making partner. I expect you’ll want to prepare a few remarks to contribute. And do try to find a suitable date to accompany you. You know how I hate odd numbers at a party.”

“Or I could not go.”

“You’ll come, Sabrina, and you will play nice. You and Holly used to be close before that unpleasantness with the Graham boy.”

“You mean before she blamed me for ruining her wedding? That unpleasantness?”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware of your version of events,” her mother said as though the truth were exhausting, as though Sabrina’s statements were merely one interpretation rather than the truth .

It had been ten years and still her mother couldn’t fathom that her perfect eldest daughter might have done anything wrong, that maybe Sabrina wasn’t a jealous monster hellbent on destroying her sister’s happiness. Ten years and nothing had changed.

You will not let her lack of faith in you hurt you anymore. You will not give her the power to affect how you feel about yourself. You will not question what you know to be true because of your mother’s inability to acknowledge it.

“I’ll forward the details and we’ll see you next weekend. And do remember to do something with your hair.”

The line went dead and Sabrina shoved the phone into her purse.

You will not cry in a hotel hallway because your mother is exactly the person she has always been. You will not cry over things you cannot control. You will not cry.

No, she wouldn’t cry. But she also wasn’t sure she could sit in an auditorium and pretend she wasn’t barely holding it together, that her mother’s casual dismissal—of the heartache she’d endured over the last few years, of her desires, of her integrity—hadn’t left her raw, like the stinging pain of an old wound reopened. And if she did somehow manage to pull it together long enough to sit through the keynote, to take halfhearted notes she’d struggle to decode later, she knew all it would take is one look from Sebastian for her to crumble.

Crying wouldn’t help.

But tequila might.

***

She’d worn a pencil skirt.

How was Baz supposed to focus on partnership opportunities with tour bus companies when Sabrina was wearing a fucking pencil skirt ?

Despite his best efforts to avoid Sabrina, he kept running into her. And each time he passed her in the crowded hallway or narrowly avoided joining the same break-out session that she’d chosen, his frustration increased.

Frustration that she was here at all, that she was headed back to Aster Bay when this was all over, that she existed on the same plane of existence as him.

Frustration that in the years since they’d last seen each other, she’d somehow gone from being a cute kid barely old enough to drink to being this knockout of a woman in red lipstick and flirty little dresses and goddamn pencil skirts.

But most of all, frustration at himself for even noticing the lipstick and the skirts, for wanting to wrap his fist in that cascade of auburn hair and tug until she gasped, for wanting anything to do with her at all.

Baz had spent the decade since his failed attempt at marriage making sure he would never be in a vulnerable position with a woman again. Sure, he flirted and he fucked but he didn’t feel anything.

It wasn’t fair that Sabrina could make his blood hum with just a bat of her eyelashes and a flash of toned calf muscle—and he couldn’t even begin to think about the strange sensations she’d inspired when she gripped his hand and slept on his shoulder on the plane the day before, the strange mix of calm and protectiveness that had rapidly usurped his usual state of annoyance. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?

When the audience around him burst into applause, he realized he had hardly heard a word of the keynote—he’d been too busy hating himself for wondering what Sabrina Page wore under her skirt. There was no way he could go back to their shared hotel room and risk being cooped up with her in that confined space for hours on end. It had been hard enough to sleep on the couch for the last two nights, to slip in and out of the room without having to converse with her, to force himself to fall asleep in a room that smelled like her. He wasn’t sure he could do it for another night.

Which only left two options: he could get absolutely shit faced and pass out for the rest of the night, or he could find a willing woman who was interested in helping him work out some of this…whatever this was. Either way, the initial destination was the same.

***

He heard Sabrina before he saw her.

Hardly two steps into the hotel bar and Sabrina’s laugh slammed into his chest like a battering ram. He scanned the room, skipping over the table of women wearing tiaras adorned with penises surrounding a very drunk looking bride-to-be, until his eyes landed on Sabrina. She sat at the polished mahogany bar, one black patent leather pump dangling from her toes and her conference materials in a stack forgotten at her feet by her open purse. She smiled at the bartender when he slid a fresh margarita in front of her, the expression not quite meeting her eyes despite the flirtatious way she ran her finger over the bartender’s hand.

Baz stalked across the room before he even registered that he was moving. As he drew closer, Sabrina stiffened where she sat, her shoulders straightening and her head swiveling, as though she could sense him approaching. Their eyes locked and her mouth fell open in a surprised little ‘o’ before stretching into a wide smile, white teeth flashing against red lips.

“Sebastian!” She threw her arms out to the side, wobbling on her stool. Then, to the bartender, “This is Sebastian. He hates me.”

“Jesus Christ,” Baz grumbled as he slid onto the stool beside her, nudging her purse further under the lip of the bar and out of sight of any would-be thieves. “I don’t hate you. ”

Sabrina took a long sip of her drink, popping off the rim of the glass with a smacking of her lips. “Yes, you do. You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” he repeated, louder this time.

Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, that’s right. What was it you said?” She drew her brows down and scrunched up her lips in an adorable pout before lowering her voice in a ridiculous impression of him. “I don’t feel anything for you at all.”

“That’s not what I sound like.”

“Mmhmm. Yup. Yuppers. It definitely is.” She drew her finger through the salt on the rim of her glass and popped the fingertip into her mouth, sucking it clean.

Baz closed his eyes against the sight, willing the filthy, inappropriate thoughts flooding his brain to leave him the fuck alone. “You’re drunk.”

“I am?” She gasped in mock surprise and pressed her hand to her chest.

Don’t look at her chest.

He ground his back teeth together.

She poked him in the arm, her whole body swaying with the movement. “Have a drink with me.”

“No.”

“You’re no fun. But my friend here—” She pointed at the bartender. “He’s fun. What was your name? Billy? Willy?”

The bartender chuckled and held out a hand to Baz. “Philip. What can I get you?”

“Mr. Grumpy Pants isn’t drinking.” She batted the bartender’s hand away before Baz could shake it. “Told you he hates me.”

Baz scraped his hand over his face and fought for patience. The last thing he wanted to do was have a drink with Sabrina but he couldn’t very well leave her like this. Aunt Lucy and the Granny Squad would string him up by his balls if anything happened to her while they were away.

“Scotch, neat. And keep ‘em coming.”

Sabrina leveled the bartender with a serious look. “He’s got catching up to do.” She drained the last of her margarita and slid the empty glass across the bar towards the bartender. “Keep ‘em coming for me too.”

“How many have you had?” Baz asked her as Philip rimmed a fresh glass with salt.

Sabrina shrugged and plucked a pretzel stick from the bowl on the table. “More than one, less than five.” She shot him a mischievous grin as she slipped the pretzel between her lips, sucking on the end of it like it was a lollipop.

Baz forced his eyes away from her to accept his drink from the bartender. “Do you usually get drunk in the middle of the afternoon?”

“Pssh, it’s practically dinner time, which means it’s practically nighttime.”

“You’re chugging tequila like a college freshman on spring break.” He slid her glass away from her.

“You don’t know what I was like as a college freshman,” she scoffed. “You didn’t meet me until I was a senior , Grumpy Pants McGee.” He arched an eyebrow at her and she waved her hand in the general direction of his lower half. “Those are grumpy pants.”

“They’re regular pants.”

“Nope. They are the grumpiest pants that ever grumped.” She sighed heavily, the force of it pushing out her lower lip into a pout that would have been adorable on someone he didn’t thoroughly despise. “You used to be fun. Remember fun? Like when we used to dance to Wham! in the back room of the food pantry?”

He fought back a smile at the memory. “I didn’t dance.”

“You did. You absolutely did. Moved your hips and everything.” She’d pulled her drink back towards herself and took another sip. “Remember that time you tried to dip the mop and you knocked over the bucket?” She snorted with laughter.

“At least I didn’t knock over a whole shelf of pasta.”

She gasped. “Because there was a spider!”

“I remember. ”

He scraped his hand over his jaw, tamping down the urge to laugh with her. He had no interest in taking a walk down memory lane. “What are you even doing here?”

“Same thing as you, Mr. Grumpasaurus Rex.” She threw her arms out to indicate their surroundings, wobbling precariously again. He gripped the bottom of the stool to steady her.

“Not here. In Aster Bay. Why the hell did you come back?”

She bit off the end of the pretzel and chewed it thoughtfully, the corners of her lips turning down as her eyes grew misty.

“Sabrina.”

She waved him away with what was left of the pretzel. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” She took an overlarge sip of her margarita.

“Did something happen?”

She got a far off look in her eye and, for a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer him. He sipped his Scotch and waited.

Finally, she turned back to him. “My parents never wanted a second daughter. Did I ever tell you that? Probably not. Even when we were friends, we weren’t those kind of friends.” He arched an eyebrow in question. “You know, the tell-each-other-about-our-childhood-trauma kind of friends. That wasn’t us. Anyway. My mom was convinced I was going to be a boy, but really, I think she just wanted me to be. Gregory. That’s what they were going to name me. What did she need another girl for? She already had Holly.” She blinked, looking away from him and taking another sip of her margarita.

Something tightened in his chest at the sadness in her face and he found himself throwing back the rest of his Scotch to keep himself from trying to comfort her. Baz didn’t comfort women in bars—that was more of Gavin’s domain. And she still hadn’t answered his initial question.

“Holly was right, you know,” Sabrina said with a sad kind of half smile. “The day you were supposed to marry her, she said I was jealous. I was. I was so jealous. But that’s not why I asked her not to marry you.”

He clenched his jaw, his shoulders stiffening. “Sabrina, stop.”

“I didn’t want to be your sister-in-law, but I would have been. No one believes me. Everyone still thinks I ruined your wedding to be spiteful. Even you think that. How could you think that, Sebastian? We might not have been trauma-sharing friends, but we were friends.”

Baz accepted a new Scotch from the bartender as guilt twisted in his stomach. They had been friends and she’d betrayed him—at least, that’s what he thought had happened, what Holly led him to believe had happened. But here, now, Sabrina seemed so sad, like he’d been the one to betray her.

“I wouldn’t have believed me either,” she said with a sigh. “Sometimes, when Holly tells it her way, I wonder if I made it all up. She’s very convincing. That’s why she’s the lawyer and I’m the fuck up.”

“You’re not a fuck up.”

“I am. Everyone thinks it. My mom and Holly and you—”

“I do not think you’re a fuck up,” he growled. He turned on his stool to face her more completely, his knees brushing against hers.

“But you still hate me.”

“I don’t—”

She closed her eyes. “Don’t say you don’t feel anything. That’s so much worse.”

He sipped his Scotch, the pain in her voice rendering him temporarily speechless.

“I wanted to tell you the truth,” she continued, oblivious to the guilt gnawing at his bones. “But you didn’t want to hear it. Not from me. No one wanted to hear it from me.”

“Tell me now.” Her eyes flew open, meeting his with a confused wrinkle of her brow. “I want to hear it now.”

She opened and closed her mouth as though she didn’t know how to begin, then blinked and turned back to the bar, downing her margarita.

“That morning, I went to Holly’s hotel suite early. I wanted to surprise her with a wedding day mimosa, just us two, before everyone else got there.” She glanced at him, as if to confirm that he was listening. He inclined his head in encouragement, and she wet her lips before continuing. “I had a key. Took it the night before because I wanted to surprise her. She didn’t answer when I knocked so I let myself in. Mimosas in bed to start her wedding day.” Sabrina’s face fell, lost in her memory. “She was with another man.”

All the air rushed from Baz’s lungs like he’d been punched in the gut.

She glanced at him, barely seeing him, and he drained the rest of his Scotch, setting it down on the bar and tapping next to the empty glass to get the bartender’s attention. They both watched as the amber liquid rushed into the glass, waiting until the bartender had moved along again before Baz chanced a glance at her.

“Who was he?”

“Harry something-or-other. He was a partner in her law firm.”

Baz had expected the name to set off a storm inside his chest, to reignite the smoldering remains of his hatred for his ex-fiancée, but instead of a glowing ball of anger burning through his skin, he felt empty.

“He was married to his first wife back then. I don’t remember her name,” Sabrina continued. “I waited in the hallway outside her room until he left. He still had her lipstick…” She trailed her fingers over the column of her throat. “She denied it. But I know what I saw. What I heard. I told her if she didn’t tell you the truth, I would.”

“And instead she left.”

“I didn’t know she was going to do that. I didn’t think she’d… I didn’t think. ”

Baz closed his eyes, remembering the vehemence with which Sabrina had vowed she wouldn’t let her sister marry him, the immediate hurt that had flooded through him that someone he had considered his friend would want to snatch his happiness from him. He’d been blinded by the vision in his head of the white picket fence and two-point-five kids with Holly’s smile and his eyes. By his desperation to believe that she had loved him, that he could marry the perfect girl from the perfect family and somehow that would make his life perfect.

“I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said, her voice tight.

He threw back the rest of his Scotch. Whether his head spun from the alcohol or from the realization that everything he thought he knew about what happened that day was wrong, he wasn’t sure. Not that it really mattered.

“Don’t be. You saved me from an expensive divorce.”

“I should have found you. After. Made sure you were alright. You were my friend and I—”

“I wouldn’t have listened,” he said. “I wanted to believe it was your fault.”

“Why?” That single syllable tugged at his heart.

“Because it was easier that way.”

She deflated in front him as the full force of his words settled over her. He’d been ready to believe the worst of her because doing so meant he didn’t have to acknowledge his own disastrous choices. If Sabrina was the reason his wedding fell apart, then he didn’t have to face the fact that he shouldn’t have been getting married in the first place. He’d thought he was in love, but he hadn’t known Holly at all.

“I’m sorry, wildflower,” he said, the old nickname falling from his lips too easily.

Her eyes softened, her red-stained lips pressing together to hide the way they quivered. “I forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do. Friends?” she asked, holding out a hand to him .

He huffed out a breath, something loosening inside his chest. “Friends.”

He squeezed her hand lightly, the feel of her skin on his remaining even after he’d released her. She stared at the hand he’d been holding, flexing it as though she felt it too.

“Thank you for believing me,” she said softly. “If anyone was going to, I’m glad it was you.”

“How is it possible that your parents don’t know the truth?”

She sighed. “Maybe they also thought it was easier to believe it was my fault. You know, when I started volunteering at the food pantry that summer, my mom tried to convince me it was a waste of time. She thought I was doing it to avoid finishing my grad school applications.”

“Which you kind of were.”

“But as soon as I introduced you to Holly, suddenly Mom was happy I’d been working there. At least until the wedding. Then she was right back to accusing me of embarrassing the family.”

“Holly never told them what happened?”

Sabrina sputtered an incredulous laugh. “Holly have an uncomfortable conversation? Holly admit she messed up? You should know better than anyone that my sister doesn’t do either of those things.”

The memory of receiving that text message on his wedding day washed over him, shame and anger sinking in his stomach. It was bad enough to be left at the altar, but to have your wedding called off over text message? It was unforgiveable.

Beside him, Sabrina had begun spinning her margarita glass again, leaving patterns of condensation on the bar top, her lips turned down and brow furrowed. He gripped her knee and turned her towards him, using his own leg to stop her momentum when she was positioned between his thighs. “What happened today?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Mom wanted to remind me how successful and appropriate my sister is. Not like me. I’m the family fuck up.”

A low noise rumbled in Baz’s chest. “Will you stop saying that?”

“Just once I wish Holly felt like the fuck up, ya know? Just once I wish she was jealous of me.”

Baz studied her eyes, a deep green that reminded him of a forest, of getting lost in the twists and turns of trees and overgrowth, of inhaling the sweet summer scent of moss and damp earth, of wildflowers. How did she always smell like wildflowers?

Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and he felt the ghost of her gaze as it traced his lips. At the back of his mind, an idea pushed through the cloud of alcohol, the twining branches of guilt and anger and a strange sort of relief.

Without taking his eyes from her, he lifted a hand to hail the bartender. “Another round.” She raised her eyes to his and he lowered his voice, for only her to hear. “Then let’s make her jealous.”