need three boyfriends?” she’d turned the phone over to Anastasia who had rattled on about her fiancé who was heading to the Trobriand Islands to do field work for six months.
He didn’t even know she had a fiancé. And all he could think was, Not another wedding.
Maybe three boyfriends was better than one serious one. He hoped the guy stayed gone five years.
The next day—while Neely was, naturally, out sailing with Max—they’d called again. Not once. Not twice. Half a dozen times or more. To ask where the blender was. Then where the vacuum was. Then where the broom was. Didn’t he have a dustpan? Did he know if the recycler would take broken glass?
“What sort of glass?” Seb had demanded. “What’d you break?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” one of them said airily. He never had any idea which. “Nothing important.”
Probably it wasn’t, he’d lied to himself. But as he couldn’t make himself believe it, he’d made sure he had time, before taking them out to dinner, to drop in and survey the damage himself.
There was clutter everywhere. But it wasn’t much worse than he’d imagined—and he never did figure out what had broken. It hadn’t been a bad evening. The food was good, his sisters had behaved well, and he would have enjoyed himself except for periodically wondering if, while he was eating salmon, Robson and Max were feasting on each other.
It had seemed all too likely when he got back to the houseboat at ten and only Harm, the rabbit and the guinea pigs were there to greet him.
Of course, she could have come home and gone to bed. Maybe she had, he’d told himself. But after an internal debate about whether he should or not, Seb decided that, as owner of the houseboat, he was allowed to check his tenant’s room. So he cracked open the door, hoping to see her soundly sleeping.
He saw an empty bed. And all the kittens escaped.
Thank God he got them all back in and the door shut. But it was after eleven and he had just been coming out of the bathroom from taking a shower when she came up the stairs.
She looked tousled and tumbled and too damn beautiful.
And his shower had not been nearly cold enough.
“Savas here.”
Ah, yes. The Voice of Authority. Clipped. Precise. Pure business. And with an unfortunate slightly rough, very masculine edge that sent a frisson right down Neely’s spine even though she was determined to be immune.
“Your boat is sinking.”
“What!”
So much for clipped precise authority.
Neely smiled. Perhaps it wasn’t the nicest way to convey the news that there was a leak in the underbelly of Sebastian’s new property, but as it could have been her houseboat, she wasn’t very inclined to play nice.
“You heard me,” she said. “There was water all over the floor this morning.”
“Robson?” The voice was barking in her ear now. She supposed she ought to have identified herself. “Is that you?”
“Who else could it possibly be?”
“One of my sisters,” he muttered. Then “What are you talking about?”
“Water water everywhere,” she said. “It means there’s a leak down under somewhere. I remember it happening once before. Frank had to call someone to come and pump something out, then get down under there and fix it. Sorry, I can’t get more technical than that. I can find out who he called, if you want,” she added helpfully. “Or maybe you have a better idea.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, long enough that she wondered if he might actually have a better idea. But then he said, “Get the guy’s name. Call him if you can and ask him to do it. I can’t get back until Friday.”
It was Wednesday evening now. He’d left on Monday, so basically she’d enjoyed a Sebastian-free week so far. It had been quite blissful.
Or it would have been if Max hadn’t taken to teasing her every day, asking her if she missed him.
“Right,” she said now briskly. “I’ll try to track Frank down. Sorry to trouble you.”
“No trouble,” he said. “It’s my responsibility. It’s my b—”
“Your boat. Yes, I know that. Okay. Bye.” She was about to hang up when he spoke again.
“Robson?”
She put the phone back against her ear. “Yes?”
“How’s Harm? Pushed anyone else in the water?”
“What?” The questions surprised her. “Um, no. But there hasn’t been anyone else here, either.”
“Good. I thought perhaps—Never mind. How’s the weather?”
“The weather?” What on earth? She was talking to Sebastian Savas about the weather? “Well, it’s raining,” she said. “As usual. Imagine that.”
He laughed. It was a low, intimate chuckling sound that sent a quick unexpected shiver of awareness down the back of her neck.
“Not here,” he said. “It’s hot in Reno.”
“I should think it would make a nice change.” She stared out the window at the rain bucketing down and tried to imagine a bit of sunshine.
“It does. But still I’ll be glad to get back.”
“So Harm can push you in the water again?”
“Not exactly.” But there was the unexpected sound of a smile in his voice.
Neely was having a hard time believing this conversation was happening. She hadn’t wanted to ring Sebastian in the first place. She’d imagined he would be abrupt, abrasive and think she was overstepping her bounds. When he was polite about the leak, that was as much as she’d hoped for. She certainly didn’t expect casual conversation.
And while it was difficult to imagine it was Sebastian on the other end of the connection, at the same time she was having no trouble seeing him—in her mind’s eye—at all.
It was evening. He was on the road. She’d been there often enough that she understood the scenario. There was no noise in the background, so he wasn’t out in one of Reno’s nightspots. He’d likely be in his hotel room, perhaps lying on his bed.
No. Don’t go there.
But even as she warned herself, a vision of the last time she’d seen Sebastian—damp-haired and bare-chested—became all too vivid, and she had to swallow hard. But before she could say a word, he spoke again.
“I don’t much like being on the road,” he said quietly.
And what was she supposed to do? Say, Too bad. Goodbye?
