First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Sixteen

“What was that?” Sabrina whispered to Sebastian as they walked, hand-in-hand, towards her parents’ front door.

“What?”

“ I apologize, Maryann ,” she said, lowering her voice in a poor imitation of his rich baritone.

He shot an amused glance her way. “That’s not what I sound like.”

“ Yes, Maryann. Of course, Maryann. May I lick your boots, Maryann?” she continued.

He stopped, turning to meet her eyes, the corner of his mouth quirking up. What a rush, to make this man smile, even a half smile.

“May I lick your boots ?” he repeated.

She shrugged and bit the inside of her cheeks to keep from laughing, “If you’re into that sort of thing.”

He chuckled and turned back towards the door where her mother now hovered, sighing theatrically, and pulled Sabrina along with him. Sabrina’s smile broke free, the exasperated laughter in his eyes easing some of the tension that had wrapped around her spine on the drive to Brookline. She liked needling him, liked watching him try to pretend he wasn’t amused by her, almost as much as she liked the feel of his hand in hers .

“Richard! Sabrina and Baz are here!” Maryann shouted as she turned away from the door and disappeared down the hall, continuing to shout her husband’s name.

Sebastian mounted the first step, but Sabrina froze, like her mother’s bellowing had brought back every time she’d ever visited this house and it had gone poorly. Why had she agreed to come? To bring Sebastian? She tugged on his hand until he stepped back down.

“Let’s make a break for it,” she hissed.

“What?”

“We could get back in your car and go. Before they come back. Dad’s probably still mixing his gin and tonic. We could get gone before—”

“Get gone?” His eyes searched the sky above her head as though he’d find the answer for how to deal with her written in the stars. “I thought you wanted to come here.”

“I didn’t want to. I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because—because I did. But this was a mistake. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

He stiffened, his jaw going tight, and he pulled his hand from hers, stuffing it into his pants pocket. “If you didn’t want me to come, you could have said something before we sat in traffic for two hours.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want you to come.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me.”

“ I didn’t want to come.”

“What are you two standing out there for?” Sabrina’s father’s voice cut through the air as he appeared in the open doorway. “Come in, come in. Can’t stand here all evening with the door open.”

Sebastian turned to her father and extended his hand as he climbed the steps. “Richard. Good to see you again, sir.”

“Baz.” Her father shook his hand, the ice in the gin and tonic clutched in his other hand rattling against the glass. His voice was several degrees colder when he turned his attention to her. “Sabrina. I expect you to apologize to your mother. Running off and getting married without so much as a note to let us know you were even engaged.” He shook his head. “Your mother was devastated.”

“It was my fault, Richard,” Sebastian said, his back ramrod straight and that muscle in his jaw ticking away. “We got carried away. You know how it is.”

She hardly recognized this sanitized version of Sebastian, as though he were some kind of politician, scraping his rough edges smooth to fit until he could fit his entire personality into a soundbite.

She hated it.

Her father ran a wary look over Sabrina, the hardness of his gaze a clear repetition of his demand that she apologize, before returning his attention to Sebastian. “Women do know how to make a man behave irrationally. I can hardly blame you for that,” he laughed, heedless of the way Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. But her father was not one to be deterred. He clapped Sebastian on the shoulder and continued on, as though he hadn’t accused his daughter of somehow confounding Sebastian’s good sense. “I hear you’ve built yourself quite an impressive firm down in Rhode Island. Good for you, son.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He led Sebastian into the house, barely sparing a glance for Sabrina. “Can I get you a drink? Maryann’s stocked the bar cart with the best for tomorrow’s shindig.”

Sebastian glanced over his shoulder at Sabrina as she trailed behind them, closing the front door with a soft click. She tried to send him a reassuring smile as her father led him down the hall towards the study where Sabrina knew a small fortune in alcohol waited to impress the guests her parents entertained, but she barely managed a strained tip of her lips. Sabrina’s mother reappeared in the large entrance hall, skidding to a stop a few feet from her daughter.

“Where are your bags?” her mother asked, holding her hands out as though her daughter’s luggage would magically appear.

“Hi, Mom. Good to see you.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Did you leave them in the car? We’ll have to send Baz out to fetch them later. Your father has already corralled him for a drink, I’m sure, and you know how he hates to be interrupted while he’s enjoying his gin and tonic.”

Sabrina did know. Once, when she was about eight, she’d made the mistake of bursting into her father’s study after returning home from a week at sleepaway camp, desperate to show him the collection of pinch pots she’d made. She’d had visions of him displaying them in his office alongside the photos of him and his clients on the golf course, the engraved knickknacks from various charities in recognition of his law firm’s donations. “Sabrina, can’t you see I’m busy?” he’d said instead. No greeting for his youngest daughter who hadn’t seen him in seven days. No interest in the bits of pottery spilling from her small hands.

It was the last time she’d attempted to impress her father with her art.

“Well, let’s see it.” Her mother looked at Sabrina expectantly.

“See what?”

“The ring , Sabrina. What else?”

Sabrina lifted her left hand, allowing her mother to snatch at it and lean close, inspecting the bands on her finger. Her mother hummed to herself, tilting Sabrina’s hand to see how the diamond caught the light. “Not bad,” she said at last, releasing her hand. “White gold, I assume?”

“I think they’re platinum.”

Her mother’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Not bad at all.”

Was that approval in her mother’s half smile? Surely not. Surely Sabrina wasn’t seeing that look on her mother’s face for the first time in years because Sebastian had picked a set of rings with a ridiculous price tag.

To think, all I had to do to get my mother’s approval was marry a man with money. The thought left a bitter taste on her tongue.

“Come. The men will join us in the parlor when they’re done with their little chat. I wanted a moment to speak to you alone.” Her mother led her through the high archways of the front entrance hall to a formal sitting room decorated in shades of beige and cream. Her mother moved straight to the drink cart—a cart in every room, it seemed—and filled a glass with ice and vodka as she continued. “Your father had all the paperwork drawn up last week. All you need to do is sign.”

“What paperwork?”

Her mother handed her a thick envelope. She peeled back the flap and her stomach sank. “Mom, Sebastian and I don’t need a post-nuptial agreement.”

“Like you and Jordan didn’t need a pre-nup?” Her mother shot her a pointed look. “If you’d listened to us about that in the first place, you never would have lost your studio in Maine.”

“I didn’t lose it —”

“You wouldn’t have been forced to sell because he never would have had his grubby fingers on your business in the first place. You’re opening a new business, Sabrina, and suddenly you’re married all over again. Don’t repeat the same mistakes. Sign the papers and get Baz to sign too.”

“Ah, there you are,” her father said, appearing at the opposite entrance to the room with Sebastian in tow.

Sabrina shoved the envelope behind the bottles of liquor on the drink cart and scanned Sebastian’s person for signs of distress, but found nothing more than a stilted posture and an untouched glass of Scotch. Her father ushered his new son-in-law into the room and joined her mother in a pair of armchairs opposite the settee.

Right. So it’s to be an interrogation .

The last time Sabrina had sat on that settee with a boy was before her senior prom. JT Prindiville, who her father had insisted on calling Jeffrey, knew all the right things to say, when he should laugh, when he should nod along in solemn agreement. Her parents had been thrilled to see her with such a suitable prom date. Never mind that JT Prindiville had grabbed her ass when they posed for pictures on the curved staircase in the entrance hall, or that he’d flung himself on top of her in the limo as soon as they’d left her driveway, insisting that she owed him at least a kiss for picking out such an expensive corsage. She shuddered at the memory as she sank down onto the stiff cushion, Sebastian at her side.

“You alright?” he asked softly.

She nodded. “You? Dad wasn’t too hard on you?”

“Grilled me on my projections for the next fiscal year.” She sucked in a breath, and he turned inquisitive eyes her way. “It’s fine. The business is solid.”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to imply—”

“Stop whispering, Sabrina. It’s rude,” her mother snapped.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed, his forehead creasing, but she gave him a tiny shake of her head. “Sorry, Mom.”

“ That she apologizes for,” her mother huffed. “Not neglecting to tell me my youngest daughter got married. Not robbing me of the chance to help you pick out a dress or plan the wedding. We didn’t even know you two were seeing each other.” Her eyes darted to Sabrina’s stomach and back to her face. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

It shouldn’t have hurt so much, the implication that Sebastian had only married her because she was pregnant, the suggestion that she’d somehow made an even bigger mess of her life than they already suspected. And something darker. An old frustration twisting in her gut. Did her mother not remember the hours of doctor’s visits, the ER trips, the prognosis handed down to her at sixteen, when she was too young to understand how deeply her PCOS would impact her life?

Sebastian’s hand slid into her own, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tightly. “We’re not pregnant,” he said with a chuckle that sounded nothing like him at all. “Just impulsive.”

“At least now it makes sense why you abandoned your business in Maine and moved back to Aster Bay,” her mother continued, only slightly mollified by Sebastian’s social graces.

“I didn’t abandon it. Jordan bought me out.” A storm gathered behind her eyes, and Sabrina imagined the scribbled clouds of twisting lines cartoonists added to thought bubbles to indicate consternation. She imagined one of those clouds forming deep in her brain, knotting together veins and tendons into a giant scribble of a headache.

“For a song, I’m sure,” her father muttered. “If you’d gone to business school like you were supposed to—”

“Then I wouldn’t have had the studio in the first place.”

Sebastian’s gaze ping-ponged back and forth between Sabrina and her parents, the crease in his brow deepening, as though he were trying to make sense of the hostility that thickened the air.

“Sabrina is a brilliant businesswoman,” he said, squeezing her hand, though he held her father’s gaze without wavering. “In fact, that’s what we were doing in Las Vegas in the first place. She was chosen by the town’s Merchants’ Association to be their representative at a business conference.” He looked at her fondly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “She’s been appointed to the Food and Wine Festival committee and she’s already started teaching the other business owners in town how to use game theory to increase tourism. And her new studio will open very soon.”

“Another studio,” her mother humphed, as though she hadn’t heard anything else Sebastian said.

But Sabrina wasn’t listening to their muttered concessions. She was too stunned by Sebastian’s praise. Did he really mean that? Did he really think she was…brilliant?

“How’s your golf game these days?” her father asked Sebastian, shifting topics as if he and her mother hadn’t just picked apart her life choices for the umpteenth time. “Sheldon and I have an early tee time tomorrow. I’m sure we could squeeze in another player.”

If Sebastian was bothered by the mention of his former fiancée’s husband, he didn’t show it. “I’m afraid I’d only hold you back. Golf isn’t really my game.”

“You’ll hardly want to stay here with the ladies.” Her father laughed at the ridiculousness of the notion.

Sebastian glanced at Sabrina before raising their clasped hands to his mouth and brushing his lips over her knuckles. “Don’t be so sure,” he said to her father.

Her stomach swooped.

You will not believe a word that comes out of his mouth tonight when he’s turned into some kind of Stepford husband. You will not read into the heat in his eyes and the little touches. You will not believe your own lies.