First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Fifteen

“Sabrina?”

Sebastian’s voice pinged through the condo, bouncing off all the metal and hardwood until it knocked at the door to the bathroom where Sabrina stood on the bathmat, naked, massaging lotion into her legs, her wet hair twisted on top of her head in a towel.

“In here!” she called back.

Heavy footsteps drew nearer, each one coiling something hot and tight low in her belly. Sebastian was mere steps away and she was naked, her skin still damp from her shower, her hands gliding over her thighs and calves as she methodically applied the lotion. If he were to open the door, if he were to lean on it too hard—he was always leaning in doorways, as if he didn’t know how gorgeous it made him look, or maybe because he did know?—the latch on the bathroom door might give way. He might catch a glimpse of her, naked in his condo— their condo. Her nipples tightened at the thought, the way she imagined his eyes would darken, the tick of his jaw, the heavy outline of him in those flimsy sweatpants he always slept in.

Stop. He doesn’t want you.

That’s what he’d said the night before, wasn’t it? Not in so many words, but that’s what he’d meant. And after Aunt Lucy’s warning… Definitely best to shut down any fantasy she still harbored that her fake husband might turn into her real lover.

His footsteps paused outside the bathroom door. “You almost ready to go?”

“Five minutes.” More like ten, but who’s counting?

She rinsed her hands in the sink, washing away the excess lotion, and wrapped one of his oversized, fluffy towels around herself, tucking the end into the top between her breasts. She removed the towel from her head and scrunched the still-damp locks in the fabric, working out the last bits of water.

“So ten?” he asked from the other side of the door.

Her cheeks ached from trying to contain her smile. She set aside the towel she’d been using to dry her hair and opened the bathroom door. Sure enough, Sebastian was leaning against the door frame. His eyes slid down her body, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

“Ten minutes,” she said. “You can time me.”

He cleared his throat, his eyes darting away. “I have something for you.”

“Is it an insurance card?”

“No. Well, yes. The temporary card is next to your purse.” He tilted his head down the hall, towards where she’d left her purse on the kitchen island. “The permanent one will be here next week. But this is something different.”

Sabrina wasn’t sure what she expected when he reached inside his jacket pocket, but it certainly wasn’t a jewelry box. A black velvet ring box, to be exact. He held it out to her.

She opened the box and sucked in a shocked breath. The light glinted off the large oval diamond solitaire nestled in the box beside a matching platinum wedding band, a trio of small diamonds embedded in the center. “What is this?”

“Can’t take you to your parents’ house without a proper ring.” Sebastian reached for her left hand, but paused before he touched her. “May I? ”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t until he was slipping the gold band she’d worn for the last few weeks off her finger that she realized he also wore a new band, platinum to match the rings he’d presented to her. She grabbed for the gold band as he moved to pocket it.

“I like our original rings,” she said, a lump forming in her throat that she couldn’t quite explain.

“They’re cheap.”

“Inexpensive,” she countered.

“It’ll probably turn your finger green.”

“Hasn’t yet.”

He paused, meeting her eyes, and placed the gold band in her palm.

“Where’s yours?” she asked.

“In my pocket.”

“You didn’t get rid of it?”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Seemed wasteful.”

“But buying new rings wasn’t?”

His eyes darted up to hers and away, back to her hand as he carefully removed the engagement ring from the box and slid it onto her finger. “Maybe we needed real rings.”

Her fingers clenched around the small gold band hidden in her palm. “We already had real rings.”

He paused with the wedding band halfway down her finger. His eyes narrowed as he examined the new jewelry on her finger. “Are these…” He cleared his throat and started again. “Are these not good?” His eyes flicked to hers and then back to the rings, but in that flash she saw the insecurity scrabbling for purchase. Her chest ached at the vulnerability there, how young and unsure he seemed in that moment, this man who was always sure of everything. “The jeweler said—”

“They’re perfect.” His eyes flicked to hers again, the doubt written in the tension in his lips and the furrow between his brows. “Really, Sebastian. They’re beautiful. But it wasn’t necessary. That’s all.”

He exhaled hard through his nose and finished sliding the wedding band into place, his fingers lingering for a moment to trace the line of the two bands against her skin. “It was. For me.”

His fingers drifted from the rings across her palm, settling against her wrist. Each stroke of his fingertips against the sensitive skin there sent tendrils of hope through her nerve endings, wrapping themselves around her heart and squeezing.

Stupid traitorous heart. Add it to the list of treasonous organs.

“Give me five minutes,” she said, gently pulling her hand away and slipping past him to get to her bedroom.

“I’ll give you ten,” he said, turning to face her. His tone was joking but his eyes held hers with such weight she felt it drop into her belly, like a stone sinking into the ocean, cushioned only by the faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the quirk of his lips.

You will not kiss him again. You will not let yourself hope for more with this man who has already told you he doesn’t want that.

She slipped inside the bedroom, pausing before she closed the door. “Thank you, Sebastian. Not just for the rings, but for coming with me this weekend. For…for all of it.”

He nodded, a barely perceptible dip of his chin, and held her gaze as she closed the door. She pressed her forehead to the door, forcing air into her lungs, willing those tendrils wrapped around her heart to loosen enough to ease the ache settling into her chest.

You will not fall for your husband.

***

The two-story, red brick home of Maryann and Richard Page sat at the top of a winding, tree-lined driveway, the paving stones meandering across the lush, green lawn until they came to a stop at the front entrance of the sprawling home. In the golden light of the late summer early evening, the house seemed to glow, as though the Pages had arranged for spotlights to highlight the most imposing angles of the gabled roof, to draw attention to the ivy and wisteria climbing one side of the structure. Baz wouldn’t have been surprised if they had.

Baz had only been inside the monstrosity of a home once, on the evening of his and Holly’s engagement party, when Maryann and Richard had gathered together all of their wealthiest friends to celebrate their daughter’s impending marriage. He hadn’t needed to stand on the gleaming hardwood floors in rooms decorated as though white were an entire color palette unto itself to know he didn’t belong.

But that was before.

A lot had changed in the intervening years. His suit was no longer too large, hanging from the slight shoulders of a man who lost himself so thoroughly in his work that he forgot to stop for meals. Instead, he’d had this suit custom tailored to highlight the new breadth of his frame, the taut musculature he’d cultivated as carefully as he’d cultivated his new wardrobe. His shoes weren’t damp from where the rainwater had slipped through a worn patch on the sole, but shined from their latest polishing, the leather supple and a perfect match for his belt.

And now you’re here with the other sister.

Baz parked his car beneath the linden tree at the top of the driveway and waited. Sabrina had hardly said a word as they’d approached her family home, her spine stiffening, shoulders pulling back into the posture of a woman who had been frequently scolded for slouching. Her fingers closed around the new rings on her left hand, twisting the metal bands around and around, as her eyes fixed on the light spilling from the front windows of the house.

“How did we meet?” she asked, a strain in her voice that Baz didn’t recognize .

He fumbled for an answer to her question, not sure how to say, You knocked over a rack of donated produce at the food pantry and we spent the better part of the afternoon trying to sort twenty types of squash into their correct bins again—don’t you remember?

“ I mean,” she said, turning to face him, her back still perfectly straight, “how did we reconnect? They’ll want to know how this happened.” She gestured between them, then returned to twisting her rings.

“We could say your aunt—”

She shook her head firmly. “Aunt Lucy would have told my mom. Have you ever been to Maine?”

“Maine?”

“Kennebunkport, yes. Have you ever been there?”

“Maybe?”

“We could say we ran into each other when I was still living there. You were visiting friends, or on vacation. Six months ago, maybe? Does that seem long enough for us to have...for it to become...for—”

“For us to fall in love?” She gave a wide-eyed nod, the speed of her ring turning increasing. He knocked her hand away and laced his fingers through hers, suddenly overcome with the urge to touch her, to settle the constant hum of anxiety that seemed to surround her since they’d cross the state line. “I ran into you in a bar.”

“Coffee shop,” she corrected.

His lip twitched with the urge to smile. “A coffee shop, then. We exchanged numbers.”

“We stayed in touch,” she said, her gaze locked on the glide of his thumb back and forth over the back of her hand. “The occasional phone call turned weekly. Then daily. We stayed up talking until all hours of the night. Since neither of us could sleep anyway.”

His gut twisted with longing for those late-night phone calls they’d never have, for the hours of making her laugh, listening to her ramble. For falling asleep with the phone pressed to his ear. For the easy courtship, the morphing of friends to something more. For the inevitability of it, the security of it.

He’d never considered himself a romantic, but he could picture it, how it would be to fall for Sabrina. It would be as easy as breathing, a slow slide into a warm pool and, before he could realize he didn’t know how to swim, he’d already be floating. He could imagine how it would feel to spend his day waiting to crawl into bed so he could hear her voice. It wouldn’t be all that different from the way it felt now to crawl into bed and hold his breath so he could hear each shift of her skin beneath the sheets on the other side of the guest room wall.

When was the last time he’d wanted the way Sabrina made him want?

Careful...

“And then you moved back to Aster Bay,” he said.

“To Aunt Lucy’s at first. I wouldn’t have wanted to put any pressure on you. I mean, what if we met again in person and this...what if it wasn’t as good as it had felt from a distance? But it would have been a silly thing to worry about.”

“Not silly. Pragmatic.”

She loosed a startled laugh. “As if any of this is pragmatic.”

He grinned despite himself and let his thumb drift over the ring on her finger, straightening the diamond solitaire until it lined up perfectly with the tiny sparkling gems embedded in the matching band.

“And then Vegas?” he asked.

“The least pragmatic of all.” A deep crease formed between her brows as she lifted her face to his. “Do you think they’ll believe it?”

With his free hand he smoothed her furrowed brow, the back of his hand grazing her cheek as he lowered it. “Of course.”

“Really? ”

“I almost believe it myself.”

Her eyes widened, a look somewhere between panic and pain swirling amongst the green of her irises.

Shit. That was too honest.

She opened her mouth to speak, but a sharp knocking on the drivers’ side window cut her off.

They turned to see the exasperated face of Maryann Page peering through the window, her lips twisted into a purse that emphasized the pink lipstick seeping into the crevices around her mouth. Baz lowered the window and pasted on his most neutral smile, the one he used with new clients and customer service representatives.

“Are you two going to sit in the car all evening?” she demanded. “Your father and I are waiting.”

“I apologize, Maryann,” he said as Sabrina’s hand tightened its hold on his. “We were just about to come in.”

Maryann harrumphed, clearly annoyed that she couldn’t continue scolding her daughter over the perceived slight. “Yes, well, come along then.” She marched off across the flag stone without waiting to see if they followed.

“So it begins,” Sabrina said under her breath.