people’s dreams did come true, he supposed as he walked away.
Frankly Seb found it hard to imagine.
“It was the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to,” Neely said on their way home.
“Uh-huh.”
She slanted him a glance. His gaze was, of course, on the road. It was late—past eleven—and they were exhausted, but fortunately they were nearly home. She’d been carrying the conversation all the way. Sebastian’s contributions had, like the last one, been delivered in single syllables and a monotone.
Of course he’d done so much to make it a great day for his sister that she didn’t expect him to talk a lot. But he’d been increasingly quiet, not just since they’d left the reception but since the dance his father had cut in on.
Now, as he turned down the hill to the parking area by the dock, she said quietly, “It’s actually hard to hate him.”
She didn’t say whom. She knew she didn’t have to.
Sebastian’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t know.” His tone was cold.
At least, Neely thought, it wasn’t that light dismissive tone that made her crazy.
“You don’t hate him,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
“I don’t give a damn about him,” Sebastian said roughly. He turned into a parking space and cut the engine.
“Not true.”
His jaw worked. In the streetlight she could see his knuckles whiten as his fingers clenched.
“He wanted to talk to you, not me,” Neely said quietly.
He didn’t look at her, just stared straight ahead. “He could have talked to me four days ago.”
“He really did get delayed in Japan.”
Sebastian slapped his hands on the steering wheel. “Don’t make excuses for him!”
“I’m not making excuses!”
“No?” He turned to glare at her. “What do you call it?”
“Sanity?” she suggested. “Common sense?”
“To believe everything he tells you? To let yourself be conned?”
“I’m not letting myself be conned! He said he wanted to apologize. You wouldn’t let him get close.” That was more or less what he had said. Plus he’d said he wanted to get to know the woman who seemed to have captured his oldest son’s heart.
Of course she didn’t say that now.
Sebastian was already snorting his disbelief at what she did say. He jerked open the car door and came around to open hers, but Neely got out by herself and stalked down the dock toward the houseboat.
Sebastian caught up with her. “I don’t want him close,” he said flatly.
“I think you made that perfectly clear. Look,” she said, rounding on him by their front door, “I’m not condoning your father’s behavior. I think it stinks, but—”
“Did you tell him that? You didn’t, did you?” he demanded furiously. “Of course you didn’t! You’re just like all the rest!”
He stuck his key in the lock and shoved the door open. Harm bounded up to meet them. Kittens tumbled sleepily down the stairs. Sebastian ignored them all, just held the door and simultaneously glowered accusingly at her.
Disregarding her dress and everything but the pain in her heart and the tears that stung her eyes, Neely marched past him and knelt to wrap her arms around the dog. She hugged him hard, pressed her face into his short soft fur. Drew a breath. Drew strength.
Then she stood again and turned to face Sebastian. “I did, you know,”
He stared. “Did what?”
“Told him it stunk, what he’d done. Told him he hurt you. Told him what a jerk he was.” She glared at him defiantly.
Sebastian looked stunned. And then he shook his head in disbelief. “Sure you did. That’s why he was laughing. Why you were! Why he danced you around and kissed your cheek!”
There was a short silence and then she said, “You don’t believe me.”
He hunched his shoulder. “I saw what I saw.”
She slowly shook her head. “No, you saw what you wanted to see.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared stonily at her.
“You don’t believe me. You don’t trust me.” Neely felt cold. She felt gutted. She felt as if her determined and furious attack on Sebastian’s father, which he had certainly not been expecting when he’d asked for a dance, had all been for naught.
She’d had to give Philip credit. He’d first looked as stunned as Sebastian when she’d told him what she thought of him. But he’d listened. He’d shut his mouth and heard her out. And then he’d talked.
Of course she hadn’t believed every word he said. Of course she knew a sound byte when she heard one. But she also heard some truth in the desperation Philip Savas had expressed. She’d heard a man who had made a mess of most of the relationships in his life, a man who’d lost the respect of his eldest son and knew it. She heard a man who could be both self-aware and self-deprecating, a man who understood his own weaknesses but who hadn’t yet figured out how to compensate for them.
By the end of the dance yes, they’d laughed. But it had been equally tempting to cry—for him and for his son.
“Don’t tell me my father didn’t try to bring you around to his way of thinking,” Sebastian said grimly.
“Of course he did. In his ham-handed way, he wants you in his life. He wants us to design a hotel for him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! As if I would ever—”
“You could,” Neely said stubbornly. “We could.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ll never! And you won’t either if you want whatever we’ve got between us to work.”
“What do we have between us, Seb?” she asked. She was almost afraid to, not really wanting to face the answer. “Do we have love? Commitment? Forever?”
His jaw tightened. “We have a good thing. You know that.”
“I thought so,” Neely agreed slowly. “Now I’m not so sure.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Why not? Because I won’t knuckle under to my perennially absent father’s demand?”
Neely shook her head. “This isn’t about your father.”
“No? Then what is
