more out of what was clearly going to be no more than a brief encounter.
Oh, sure, his new stepmothers might have promised “forever” but it hadn’t taken Seb long to learn that it never lasted. They grew weary of Philip’s absences, his distractions, his inability to get involved. And they left.
They took their children with them and made new lives for themselves. But they never took Sebastian because Sebastian wasn’t theirs.
He only belonged to Philip—and Philip didn’t care.
No one cared.
Three stark words that cut to the core of his soul.
For years Seb hadn’t let it matter. Though at times the knowledge pressed against the inside of his head, making it throb, had clogged his throat, making it ache, he’d ignored it, put it aside, soldiered on.
He’d been wounded by his father’s neglect, but he’d survived because he’d refused to care enough—to love enough—to let it hurt.
But all the resolve in the world was no proof against this pain. This emptiness.
This was different. This wasn’t his childhood. This wasn’t his past. He was an adult. He was over all that. This was now.
This was Neely. And there was no way to fight against her leaving him. No way to turn his back, to say it didn’t matter.
Because it did.
Because, God help him, he was in love with her.
Fiercely Seb shook his head. Fought it off, lied to himself, told himself he didn’t love her. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
“Can’t, Seb?” she’d said coolly. “Or won’t?”
He hated the challenge that echoed in his mind. He fought it off. Denied it.
He wouldn’t love her. Or if he already did, damn it, he’d stop.
It would be all right. He would get by. There was nothing wrong with being an iceman. It was a hell of a lot safer. Saner. Less painful.
He’d cope.
He threw himself into his work. He spent hours overseeing every single detail of the Blake-Carmody project. If Neely wasn’t going to be there to do her part, so be it. He’d do it himself.
He wondered what other project could possibly be more important, that Max would have sent her off now, but he didn’t ask.
He didn’t want to know. Max worked from home and Seb worked in the office and in the field. When he had questions on Blake-Carmody, he asked Danny or Frank or he got Gladys to call her.
“Don’t you have her number?” Gladys asked.
“I don’t have time. Just get the answers and put it in a memo,” Seb said.
He didn’t want to talk to her. It still hurt too much.
He left the houseboat and moved back to his penthouse. It was what he’d intended all along, wasn’t it? The houseboat had been a stopgap, just until the wedding was over. Now he had his place back—all to himself.
The pizza boxes were gone. So were the panty hose. The bathroom countertops had been swept clean of nail polish, hair spray bottles, foundation, powder, lipstick and mascara.
He didn’t step on plastic soda bottles or tortilla chips. He didn’t see any remnants of his sisters’ occupation after his cleaner blitzed her way through the place. And if there was a lingering odor of overly cloying cologne in the rooms, he could leave the windows open and it would vanish within days.
Everything went back to being exactly the way he’d left it.
Only he had changed.
Now he stood in his spare austere living room with its view across the skyline to the sound and didn’t relish the view anymore. Or not as much as he had in the past.
It seemed too remote. Too far above things. Too impersonal.
It made him long for the little houseboat on the water. It made him want a kitten leaping out at his shoelaces when he walked into the kitchen. It made him want a dog smiling a doggy smile and thumping its tail when he walked in the door. He wouldn’t even mind if it shed on his navy suit coat.
He had no one to talk to. No one to share a meal with.
He had no one at all.
Jenna was the first of his sisters to call him.
“How are you?” she asked, which surprised him. Usually she only called when she wanted something and it was the first thing she said. But while he waited, the expected request never came.
“I had such a good time with you,” she said. “It was fun being a family, being together. I thought I might come back,” she said. “To go to the university. If that’s okay with you?”
“If you want,” Seb said, wondering where this had come from and waited again for the request for money or advice. But Jenna only said, “Can you have cats in the dorms, I wonder.”
“I doubt it,” Seb said. “Who cares? You don’t have a cat.”
“I do. Her name is Chloe. Neely gave her to me.”
Seb felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Neely gave you a cat?”
One of their kittens?
“Mmm-hmm.” Jenna sounded thrilled. “She said she needed to find homes for them. They were getting big enough. We all have them.”
“What?”
“She gave us each one.”
She, the triplets and Sarah each had one of Neely’s cats?
“And Marisa took the guinea pig,” Jenna told him gaily. That was Sarah’s mother.
“Yeah?” Seb wondered who got the rabbits. And Harm. He didn’t ask.
“She said she wanted us to have a part of her,” Jenna reported.
But she hadn’t wanted him to have a part of her.
Or did she think he wouldn’t want one?
The next day he bought a fish. Neely had once said she had started with a fish. They’d been sitting on the deck one evening and she’d told him about her first pet.
“I had a fish because fish are portable. Easier to take when we moved. And they don’t run away back to where they’ve been. They’re there for you.”
Like Neely had been.
He knew that now. There was no way to deny it. And as time passed he didn’t want to. He fed his fish and cared for his fish.
But frankly he thought the fish looked lonely.
