First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Nineteen

Labor Day in Aster Bay meant two things: the carnival set up shop on the Town Common, and Jamie and Ethan threw a huge barbeque at Nuthatch Vineyard for their families and friends. This was the first year since they were in college that Baz wasn’t standing next to the grill giving Jamie shit while he cooked corn and burgers. What Baz wouldn’t give to be having a beer with the guys instead of listening to one of Richard’s work associates drone on about the failure of the local Historic District Commission to enforce the restrictions on acceptable signage colors.

Except if he had stayed in Aster Bay this weekend, he and Sabrina might never have given in to the sexual tension between them. He might never have seen her come apart on her own fingers while he said filthy, depraved things to her, things that made her face flush and her eyes go liquid. He certainly wouldn’t have woken with her tucked against his chest. He wouldn’t have agreed to be fuck buddies with his wife.

Despite his cock’s adamant declarations to the contrary, he knew this was a terrible idea. As he tried to feign interest in the conversation about which shade of blue was most acceptable for restaurant signage, his eyes kept seeking Sabrina out. A flash of red hair across the lawn, a whiff of her wildflower scent on the breeze. But who could blame him? She was by far the most beautiful woman at this party—and not merely because he’d had the pleasure of seeing her naked the night before.

Well, not completely naked. Christ, they’d never even undressed. They were doing this all out of order.

What does that matter? It’s not a real marriage. It’s just sex. And health insurance. And pretending to be in love.

Which was really for the better, if Baz was honest with himself. After all, what did he know about being in love? He’d already made the mistake of thinking one Page woman was in love with him, and he saw no reason to revisit that particular brand of humiliation a second time around with her sister. It was just fucking and a convenient arrangement, making lemonade from lemons or whatever that saying was.

But then Sabrina caught his eye from across the lawn where she stood, alone for the first time all day, and her lips curved up in the smallest of smiles. He excused himself from the dullest conversation known to man and strode across the manicured grounds of her parents’ home.

“Hi,” he said, his eyes drinking her in. She wore a white dress in some kind of slippery, smooth material that hugged her curves and fell slightly above her knees. Bright red wedges the same shade she’d painted her lips and her ever-present gold chains disappearing into the neckline of her dress completed the look. Her hair fell around her shoulders in perfect waves that he knew she’d spent nearly an hour perfecting in the mirror of the guest room en suite.

“Hi,” she said back, amusement tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Having fun?” He must have made a face, because she giggled, dipping her head as though she’d hide her smile from him. “I hear Marty has very strong opinions about signage colors. Maybe we should invite him to give a talk to the Merchants’ Association.”

“Don’t you dare. ”

She laughed again, this time tilting her head back, her hair swaying around her shoulders. Christ, he liked making her laugh.

But the laughter died on her lips, her eyes shuttering themselves as they locked on something across the lawn. He looked over his shoulder, following her line of sight, to see Maryann making her way towards them with two older women, clearly intending to make introductions. He moved next to Sabrina and rested his hand on her lower back, a silent reminder that they were in this mess together.

“Sabrina, there you are!” Maryann said, exasperation coloring every flutter of her hands. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You remember Mrs. Prindiville and Mrs. Connolly.”

“Of course,” Sabrina said, her body swaying ever so slightly closer to Baz. “It’s nice to see you both again.”

“And this must be your husband. Baz, was it?” the one on the left—Mrs. Prindiville?—asked. “Maryann, he’s even more handsome than I remembered.”

“Sebastian Graham, ma’am. Nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his free hand to shake hers and ignoring the implication that this woman had been at his almost wedding.

“Have we met before?” Mrs. Connolly asked, squinting her eyes as though that would help her place him. “You’re not one of the Wellesley Grahams, are you?”

What was he supposed to say? Yeah, we probably met back when I was engaged to my current wife’s sister.

“No, the Aster Bay Grahams.”

As if sensing the potential for a social faux pas, Maryann grabbed Sabrina’s left hand, holding it out to the other women, who were immediately distracted by the sparkling rings on her finger. Baz raised an eyebrow in Sabrina’s direction, as if to say, See, new rings were a good idea . He might as well have said it out loud for the way Sabrina pursed her lips in response.

“Good job, young man,” Mrs. Connolly said. “Maryann was just telling us about your wedding.”

“She was?” Sabrina asked, glancing at her mother.

“It sounds lovely. A small, intimate wedding out of town,” Mrs. Connolly sighed dreamily. “So much more personal than these flashy weddings young people are having now-a-days.”

“I know exactly what wedding you’re thinking of, Karen,” Mrs. Prindiville replied. “No daughter of Maryann’s would be so gauche as to throw the kind of wedding the Hanley girl threw last spring.” She dropped her voice conspiratorially and leaned towards Baz and Sabrina. “I hear her father had the flowers flown in on a private jet to make sure his daughter got the right color lilies.”

“Oh,” Sabrina said, glancing at Baz.

“Sounds…expensive,” he said.

“I’m sure that was the point,” Maryann replied with a smirk towards her friends.

“Your mother was telling us you’re opening a new gallery in your husband’s hometown. How enterprising of you,” Mrs. Connolly gushed.

“I’m not sure I’d call it a gallery,” Sabrina said, glancing at her mother.

“Of course, it’s a gallery ,” Maryann laughed stiffly, her eyes bulging as she tried to communicate something to her daughter. “Sabrina specializes in ceramic sculptures.”

Baz bit back a smirk. “She makes many of the sculptures herself.”

Sabrina shot a panicked look his way as her mother’s face paled.

“My Rebecca wanted to be an artist, you know. Loved to throw paint around like Jackson Pollock. Thank heavens her father talked her into going to law school with Holly instead!” Mrs. Connolly burst into laughter.

“Speaking of Holly,” Mrs. Prindiville said, tilting her head towards the back of the house .

There, at the edge of the perfectly manicured lawn, was Baz’s ex-fiancée. He braced for the anger he expected to come, the disgust, the hurt that had hollowed him out and left him devastated a decade before. Instead he found himself studying her, this woman he’d almost married, a woman he hardly knew—even then.

Her hair was dyed an almost-white blonde and cut into a short style that hung around her chin. She was as beautiful as she’d always been, in a severe sort of way, her tailored, apple-green jumpsuit emphasizing all the angularity of her form, as though she were the physical embodiment of some geometric ideal, all elbows and straight lines. Nothing like the woman at Baz’s side, whose softness invited his touch and whose curves fit against him as though their edges could blur until the line between them disappeared completely.

“Holly!” Mrs. Connolly called, waving a hand above her head. “Over here! Come say hello!”

Holly’s narrowed eyes searched the lawn for the summons, finally landing on Mrs. Connolly. Her expression pinched even further as her eyes moved over Baz and Sabrina. Baz’s hand flexed on Sabrina’s back, pulling her tighter against his side.

With a word to the nondescript man at her side—her husband, presumably—Holly made her way across the lawn to their little group. If she noticed the frantic way her mother glanced between her two daughters or the smug expectant expression on Mrs. Prindiville’s face as the distance narrowed between them, she made no indication. By the time Holly reached their group, she wore the same practiced smile that Baz had seen a thousand times. Had he ever noticed how disingenuous it was before? How it didn’t reach her eyes?

“Mrs. Connolly, Mrs. Prindiville, so good of you to come,” Holly said as she came to a stop at the edge of their little group. She leaned across the circle to her mother, pressing her cheek against Maryann’s and making a kissing noise even though her lips had come nowhere near her mother’s skin. “Mom, was that Marty I saw talking Dad’s ear off?”

Maryann’s answering laugh bordered on shrill. “Yes, yes, it was.”

“I owe him a return call, but he cannot harass my assistant every time he wants to sue someone over their signage,” Holly sighed. “I’ve already told him he doesn’t have a case, and even if he did, I don’t practice property law.”

“I’ll make sure your father reminds him,” Maryann promised.

Holly finally turned her attention to Baz and Sabrina. Her eyes flitted over him and moved quickly to her sister, as if he hardly merited that fraction of a second of consideration. “Sabrina,” she said, her voice sharp. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

“Where else would I be?” Sabrina asked.

Again, Holly’s eyes flicked towards Baz, her nostrils flaring slightly. “On your honeymoon, perhaps.”

“We were just getting to know your sister’s new husband,” Mrs. Connolly said, oblivious to the tension between the two sisters. “Have you two met before?” She pointed a finger between Holly and Baz.

“Yes. Baz and I know each other quite well,” Holly said, sparing him a final withering glance before she turned her back to him and Sabrina. “Mom, I have to go rescue Sheldon before Marty corners him.”

With each step she took away from them, Sabrina seemed to relax. He swept his thumb back and forth over her spine. They’d come face to face with her sister and lived to tell the tale. Now all they had to do was survive the rest of the evening.

“You must be so proud,” Mrs. Connolly said to Maryann. “Both girls married and settled, and now Holly’s made partner.”

“She always was our overachiever. Set her a task and she’ll exceed expectations every time,” Maryann replied. “We never had to worry about her. Did you know she only clerked at her first firm for two months before she was promoted to junior associate? She worked countless late nights that year, so many holidays. It nearly destroyed—” Maryann cut herself off, shooting Baz a wide-eyed look, before moving on, “—well, she hardly had a personal life that year. But nothing can stop her once she’s made up her mind to go after something.”

Ahh, there’s the anger. Because now he knew exactly how Holly had become junior associate in record time. At the time, he’d been proud of her, the woman he was going to marry, climbing the ranks of one of Boston’s top rated law firms. Little did he knew she was screwing a partner.

Sabrina leaned into him, her arm sliding around his waist, and the tension in his back and shoulders began to melt away. She looked up at him, furrowed brow and earnest eyes, because she knew . She’d known all along. And if it hadn’t been for her, he would have married Holly, would have legally bound himself to a woman who had been lying to him the whole time.

In that moment, he’d never been more grateful for Sabrina, for the loyalty she’d shown him long before he had any right to expect that of her. Warmth spread in his chest, making him just reckless enough to press a kiss to her temple and breathe in her wildflower scent.

Slowly the conversation around them came back into focus as Maryann loosed a wild laugh. “I should have known right then,” she guffawed, dabbing at tears in the corners of her eyes. “Holly sat at the counter, hands clean as could be, eating her peanut butter and jelly in prim little bites, an extra sandwich beside her—for me, she said—and there was Sabrina!” She laughed again, as though the story were too hilarious to recount.

“Mom, I was three. No one wants to hear about—”

“Covered!” Maryann cackled, as though her daughter hadn’t spoken. “It was like those mud baths at the spa on Boylston Street. Peanut butter everywhere! She was up to her elbows in the jar and it was streaked all over her face, in her hair! ”

“Mom, please.” Sabrina stiffened in his arms, her jaw quivering despite the way she clenched it shut.

But still Maryann continued. “We had to get rid of the carpet, of course. No amount of cleaning could get the smell of peanut butter out of the wool. And I knew right then and there, I was destined to have two very different daughters: one who did what was expected of her, who could accomplish the task at hand with flying colors, and one who would cover herself in peanut butter!”

“Enough,” Baz barked.

Maryann and her laughing companions froze, casting startled glances his way. “I beg your pardon?” Maryann asked.

“Enough.” He slid his hand across Sabrina’s back, curling it over her hip and moving her slightly behind him.

“Sebastian,” Sabrina said softly, shaking her head, as though her embarrassment wasn’t a good enough reason to stop playing by this stupid society script.

But Sabrina was blinking back tears, and Baz had never been very good at fitting in with people like the Pages and their friends. He could not stand there and let these women talk about Sabrina as if what should have been a charming childhood story was somehow an omen of future failures.

He turned his attention to Maryann and, for the first time, he really saw her—the way she clamored for any scrap of approval from these people she called friends, how she was willing to sacrifice her own daughter for the sin of imperfection on the altar of her own social standing. And she’d never see it, never understand how much pain she caused. His heart ached for Sabrina, for the times he’d been cocooned in his own mother’s love as Sabrina had never been in hers.

“You’ve done nothing but insult Sabrina since we got here,” he said, eyes locked on Maryann, despite the anxious way she avoided his gaze. “My wife may be too polite to tell you off, but unfortunately for you, I wasn’t raised with her sense of decorum. ”

“Honestly, this is all a bit much,” Maryann tittered anxiously.

“You’re right. The way you talk about your own daughter is a bit much . And it ends now.” He slid his hand into Sabrina’s and squeezed. When she squeezed back, he felt like a king. “No one speaks poorly of my wife. Not even you. Not anymore.” He pressed his lips to Sabrina’s templed and murmured, “It’s time to go.”

Without another glance at his mother-in-law, Baz led Sabrina across the lawn, away from these people who had never deserved her in the first place. They didn’t stop to acknowledge Richard, despite him pushing through a group of guests in an attempt to intercept them as they passed, and they definitely didn’t stop to say goodbye to her sister, standing off to the side with a look of annoyance pinching her features. Instead, Baz led her up the stairs to the guest room, realization dawning that he hadn’t thought past getting her away from her awful mother to figure out what happened next. Would Sabrina want to go back to the party? Would she be angry with him for making a scene?

Did I fuck up again?

The door closed behind them and Baz found himself unsure of what to say. Their still-clasped hands hung between them and he knew he could let her go now, but he didn’t want to.

He scraped his free hand over his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

Her eyes flew to his. “You’re — what?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, his stomach churning.

“What exactly are you sorry for, Sebastian?” Her eyes narrowed. “For defending me? For caring about my feelings?" She took a step closer and his breath stung in his lungs at her nearness, at the wild, reckless feeling flinging itself against the inside of his ribs. “That was... Thank you.”

She rose up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips, her free hand gripping the lapel of his jacket and pulling him close. Relief mingled with that reckless thing in his chest, as though he’d been waiting his whole life for the movement of her lips on his and now, finally, she’d put him out of his misery. He wrapped an arm around her waist, dug his other hand into her hair, and kissed her back.

Baz spun her around, pressing her back against the closed door even as he pulled her hips tight against his own. He poured everything he didn’t understand about the way she made him feel into that kiss. Every unrestrained flutter in his gut turned into the slide of his tongue against hers, every rush of hunger that pulsed through his veins transformed into the way he nipped at her bottom lip.

She pulled back, panting, and he pressed his forehead to hers, his lips still chasing hers. She tugged on his lapels. “Let’s go home.”