the rehearsal dinner they’d shared a few too many tequilas, along with several wet kisses and a quick feel. Since all the action had stayed above the waist, it meant he was still a reliable source.
Huey stamped his foot. “This is my beat.”
Sebastian wisely sidestepped Huey’s little hissy fit. “Not that I want to get in the way of a pressing news story, but I was ever so hoping to meet up with Ms. Jeffries.” He turned his southern drawl up another notch.
“Huey, pull yourself together and go to my office,” Ray barked, his face turning an alarming shade of red. Lauren wondered if she should send him an e-mail suggesting the merits of a stress test. “I’ll get the governor’s press secretary on the phone and the spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Police. You can head out with a photographer as soon as we know what’s happening. And you, Jeffries—” Ray jabbed an index finger in the air in front of her sweater “—take Mr. Alberti to the conference room. And don’t even think about calling your source and muscling in on this story.”
Forget the e-mail, Lauren thought as she watched him lumber down the hall. She spun around and was immediately aware that she was alone with Sebastian.
“I believe you were going to show me the conference room?” he asked.
A sense of foreboding overcame her. She nodded toward the hallway. “This way.” She didn’t bother to linger and, instead, quickly clomped down the linoleum floor to the open door at the end. She sounded like a Clydesdale. Maybe clogs weren’t the best shoe choice after all.
“Here we are, Mr. Alberti.” She pushed the door open. “Is that your real name, by the way?” She waited for him to go through first.
Sebastian paused in the doorway and thought, now’s the time to bring out the truth, at least, carefully edited portions of the truth. “Please, as a Southerner and an Italian, custom prevents me from preceding a lady through the door.” He waited. “And my name really is Sebastian Alberti. Actually, Sebastiano Alberti, but I anglicized it years ago.”
That was only one of the changes he’d made when he was young—not that change solved everything.
Sebastian had long ago learned to accept the notion that he was destined to be an outsider, no matter how much he adapted. He had left Italy as a child. The land of Valentino and Visconti had grown and altered, and so had he. There was no way it could ever be home again.
Nor could Alabama be, either. His family had moved to the deep South. Their strange accent was noticeable—their ignorance of the great god Bear Bryant even more egregious. Sebastian had arrived having never thrown a baseball and never eaten fried chicken. He immediately devoted himself to becoming the most American of Americans. Ah, the fervor of a convert.
But never mind that he played tight end in high school and dated a cheerleader. He was still different, never fully accepted. His mother made sure of the latter—having run off with the rival high school’s football coach when he just started junior high.
Still, he couldn’t blame all of his sense of alienation on his mother. He had never completely fit in because, well, he just never had. No amount of time could erase the moments when he yearned to bite into crusty Italian bread instead of eating hush puppies, when he would have given anything for a bowl of creamy risotto instead of gravy on mashed potatoes.
But the anxiety of being an outsider that had so plagued him during his teenage years had gradually subsided. Now it was something he actually cultivated like a protective cloak, a cloak that even extended to his place of residence.
Besides his farm in the country, miles from anyone else, he had a small but tasteful townhouse in Georgetown. His neighbors were diplomats—strangers in a strange land.
But Sebastian was home. And he wasn’t.
But a place to plant roots wasn’t the issue at hand—it was getting a handle on a possible lead. He smiled in a way that he knew left women and thieves feeling both intrigued and slightly uneasy. And if his hunch was right in this case, the two might just turn out to be mutually inclusive. “Please, why don’t you go in first?” he offered, forcing Lauren to ease by him.
Strange, but in all the editorial meetings she had attended in this space, Lauren had never experienced the entryway as being too narrow for comfort. She eased her way through. “So you’re from Italy originally?”
“I was born in Italy, but my parents moved here when I was ten,” he said, following her into the room. He motioned to the chairs pushed into the long table. “Have a seat,” he said, and she nodded, slipping into one on the opposite side. “My father was an aerospace engineer, and he worked for the government in Huntsville, Alabama.” He waited for her to sit before unbuttoning the front of his suit jacket and lowering himself into a seat.
Lauren decided to let Sebastian be the one to dispense with the usual small talk and move on to the subject of Harry Nord. Playing the waiting game, she contented herself with looking at his large hands spread calmly on the surface of the table. Contented probably wasn’t the right word.
Sinews formed ridges on his tanned skin, and his nails were bluntly cut, attesting to strength born of outdoor activity. He wore a small, gold signet ring on his left hand, nothing effeminate—no, not by a long shot—just kind of classy, understatedly sophisticated. She had an almost irresistible urge to touch him and feel the contrast between the smooth ring and the rugged power of the muscles in his hands.
Lauren cleared her throat. “That explains your accent and your command of English,” she said and tucked her hands in her lap under the table. She didn’t feel like having him stare at her chewed nails. Strange, but their gnawed appearance had never worried her when she’d been engaged. That should have been a tip-off right there.
“Yes, well, even before we moved to the States, my mother insisted I learn English.” He coughed softly and covered his mouth. Then he lowered his hand again and drummed lightly on the table.
Maybe not so relaxed, after all.
“She was enamored of all things American—cheeseburgers, skyscrapers, baseball, Harrison Ford,” he said.
“How unItalian of her—except for the Harrison Ford part, that is.”
“Her enthusiasm was so great I can safely say I was the only kid in Poggibonsi whose mother asked him to turn the radio up when it was playing American music.”
Lauren looked at him askance. “Really? Somehow I can’t picture you humming along to Metallica.”
“You’d be surprised.” He rubbed his chin, his finger passing over the little cleft.
No, she guessed she wasn’t surprised at all. There was something dangerous about him. She instinctively knew he was bad for her health, but somehow she was drawn perversely closer. It was like succumbing to eating that second donut. No, she corrected herself, it was potentially far worse than several hundred empty calories.
“But not you?”
Lauren blinked. “Me?”
“You weren’t a heavy metal fan?”
She held up a hand in confession. “Strictly Motown. The Four Tops. The Supremes. Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ was my personal anthem.”
He studied her. “I can
