asked, sounding interested.
And the invitation to talk was somehow more than she could resist. She’d been trying to work ever since she got home. But she’d been restless—not to mention periodically mopping—and now she curled up on the sofa with Harm’s head in her lap and watched the rain.
“Well, I was home schooled mostly. Or should I say, commune schooled?” she corrected herself. “My mother was a hippie of sorts.”
“No joke?” He sounded surprised.
“Nothing funny about it,” Neely assured him. “My mother is definitely an independent free spirit. But she was never quite able to be an independent free spirit on her own. She needed a base, a group of people. But she didn’t like anyone telling her what to do. Mostly communes are live and let live. But they can have their idiosyncracies, and she always seemed to run up against them. And then we’d move on.”
“Just you and your mother?”
“Until I was twelve,” Neely said. “And then she met my stepdad. He was a policeman. We were living in Wisconsin at the time and he’d been sent to arrest her for selling her jewelry on the street without a business license. It’s funny, really,” she said, thinking about those days now, “they were so different. And yet they were just right for each other. They had a great marriage. It was awful when he died. But I knew good marriages exist because of theirs. I want a marriage like that someday.”
“Do you.” There was a sudden hard edge in Sebastian’s tone and his statement wasn’t a question. “Good luck.” He couldn’t have sounded less encouraging.
He was such a cynic. “You don’t believe in marriages that last?” She asked, at the same time wondering why they were discussing it at all. It certainly wasn’t the sort of conversation she ever expected to have with Sebastian Savas. But then, she’d never expected to be living with him, either!
“I wouldn’t say they can’t ever happen,” he said. “But I’d bet against it.”
“So did my mother. And then she found the right man. You won’t say that when you find the right woman.”
“There isn’t a right woman.”
“Well, maybe not yet, but—”
“Ever.”
“Oh.” She mulled that over, then said cautiously, “So…is there a right man?”
There was a moment’s stunned silence. Then he laughed. “No, Robson. I’m not gay. I’m just not getting married.”
Firm and final. The Voice of Authority was back now. This was the Sebastian Savas she knew.
“Act like that,” she said lightly, “and it won’t be a problem. No one will want to marry you.”
“Good.”
If there was ever an exit line, Neely decided, that was it.
“Right. Well, I won’t be expecting to get an invitation to your wedding anytime soon then. Thanks for warning me. I’d better go make your phone call now about the leak. And Harm wants out. Don’t you, Harm?” She patted the sleeping dog who never even opened an eye. “Bye.” And she rang off before Sebastian could say anything else.
Not that there was anything else to say.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation, even long after she’d hung up. It was as odd as it had been unexpected. But maybe he was just bored.
Still, when her cell phone rang the next evening and she saw Sebastian’s name come up on her caller ID, Neely was amazed.
“What?” she demanded, the heightened awareness she always seemed to feel around Sebastian battling with her very real desire to hang up at once.
“And a very good evening to you, too, Robson.” He sounded amused, and he’d lost the clipped tone he’d used when making his pronouncement on marriage the night before. Once again she heard the slightly sexy undertone beneath his sardonic response and she wondered if he was doing it on purpose. To bait her, perhaps?
She refused to succumb to its allure. “Good evening,” she said politely. “To what do I owe the honor of this call?”
“Aren’t we prim and proper, Robson? Wearing pink?”
“It’s none of your business what I’m wearing!” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she felt as if she’d been had. Was she always going to jump at the bait he dangled?
“What do you want?” she muttered.
She had been enjoying a quiet evening on her own and allowing herself the pretense that the houseboat was hers and hers alone, refusing to think about Sebastian Savas who had, drat his hide, invaded her dreams last night. How perverse was that?
And now here he was again.
“I want an update,” he said briskly, all business. “Did the guy come and fix the leak?”
Neely breathed easier. “Yes. Took him most of the afternoon, though. He’s sending you the bill. A hefty one, I imagine.”
“No doubt.”
He wanted to know what was done, and Neely told him as best she could. She hadn’t been there the whole time. “I had work to oversee,” she told him now. “I let him in, and I came back later to check how things were going. But I can’t give you a play-by-play. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I appreciate your bothering at all. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She expected him to end the conversation there, but he didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say anything. Still, he hadn’t hung up. She could hear him breathing.
There was no noise in the background of his call tonight, either. And Neely found herself with visions of Sebastian in his hotel room, lying on the bed flickering once more into her mind. She focused on a boat zipping across the lake, trying to get rid of the visions out of her head.
“Do you know where to buy little rose-colored boxes?” he asked suddenly.
Neely blinked. “What?”
“Not for me,” he said hastily. “My sister’s getting married. She’s been rattling on about these damn boxes she wants on the table at the reception. For mints or something. She keeps calling me and bugging me.”
Neely’s mind boggled. Sebastian not only had a sister, but she called him and bugged him about tiny wedding favors?
“I said, try the Internet. But she wants to see them in person,” he said wearily.
Neely almost laughed at the combination of fondness and frustration in his voice. “Oh, dear.”
“So, do you?” he demanded when she didn’t speak.
“Why on earth would I?”
“They’re rose,” he said.
