Chapter 20
Sebastian
IT WASN’T ANYTHING I didn’t already know.
I wondered if my dad had heard. But even as her words echoed in my head, I knew—for all her insistence that what we had was only casual—I wasn’t just anyone to her.
Not really. She might not want to admit it, but she forgot every other man when she was with me.
Yet, I knew she wasn’t ready for anything more. Might never be.
A few days and a lot of fucking later, I drove to Blueshore, forty minutes down the coast, after the construction crew wrapped up.
My mom made me dinner even though I told her not to. My dad wanted to hear about the inn’s progress and my recent project at NASA, which we didn’t get to discuss when they visited Coral Bay.
Usually, the fewer details I could share about my job, the more excited he got about it. “That’s top secret, right?” He’d usually say, then turn to my mom, “Your son’s working on top secret stuff, Trudy.”
I stopped on the way at Solstice Cellars, a boutique winery and artisan shop nestled between a bakery and a clothing store in the heart of town.
They carried the kind of things my mom always said she shouldn’t love but secretly did—limoncello, fig and rosemary jam, imported cheese. I picked up a gift basket and checked out their wine racks in search of something that Ruby might like.
A pair of heels clicked behind me.
“Excuse me,” came a woman’s voice when someone slightly bumped into my shoulder.
“You’re okay,” I muttered, continuing to peruse the bottles.
“Excuse me,” she repeated after a moment. “You seem like someone who knows fine things.”
I turned to look at her. And recognized her immediately.
Heather. Tan, toned, and glossy. Just like back in high school.
She was giving me a once-over. “What would you recommend?”
I could tell she didn’t recognize me.
I nodded toward a bottle on the shelf. “Depends on what you’re looking for. The Italians they carry are good.” I was just grabbing one for Ruby.
She smiled. “You have good taste.” Angling her body slightly toward mine, she added. “I bet your wife or girlfriend appreciates that.”
“Don’t have one.”
She extended a manicured hand. “Heather Warner-Lane. Well, Heather Carson actually.” Carson was her maiden name, which, apparently, she returned to.
Laughing inwardly, I shook her hand. “Sebastian Sawyer.”
Her lips parted into a slow smile. “I love that name. Seb ... Wait. You’re not... Sebastian Sawyer?”
“Yep.” The guy you said ruined both names for you.
Heather blinked, then tilted her head, the recognition dawning slowly, mixed with something else.
“Well damn.” Her gaze swept over me in open appraisal. “I mean, wow. Heard you were working for NASA.”
“I am.” I gave her a neutral smile.
“Are you visiting, or back for a while?” she asked, huffing a flirty chuckle and stepping a little closer.
“Just here for work. Helping out at the Coral Bay Inn,” I said on purpose.
Her eyebrows lifted. “That’s Ruby Locke’s place.”
Bingo. “Yep.”
“Interesting,” she said, drawing the word out. “Maybe not. You were friends in school.” After a short hesitation, she added with another smile, “If you feel like catching up, you know ...”
“I think we just did. Great catching up, Heather,” I said, then walked to the counter, paid, thanked the shopkeeper, and stepped out into the late-afternoon sun.
At my parents’ house, I welcomed my mom’s hugs, her delight over the gift basket, and my dad’s predictable questions.
“That was just baby fat. It can’t grow back,” my mom said when Dad pointed out she’d made too much food and added, “You don’t want him gaining weight again, Trudy. Do you?”
I sighed quietly, recalling the days they’d been worried that my action figure collection—mocked as “playing with dolls”—might ruin my chances with girls.
When they asked about Ruby, I kept it to the work we were doing at the inn. Neither pressed further.
Only when my dad walked me out to the car—a rented Mustang, his kind of thing—did he shift gears. He let out a low whistle when he saw it. “That’s a great machine. American-made,” he said, leaning on the driver’s side window while I settled in. I sometimes rented cars I knew he’d like.
But then his expression became serious. “You should either get serious with this girl ... or if she’s not it, cut it. You’re thirty-five.”
He didn’t have to say more. That pretty much confirmed that he’d heard Ruby’s reply to her mother that day.
“Dad, don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not worried, but I have someone I want you to meet,” he stated.
“No, thanks.”
“Just have a cup of coffee with her while you’re here.”
“No, thanks.”
“As a personal favor to me.” He put his hand over his heart.
Great. The guilt card.
“Dad. No. Sorry.”
“I’ll text you her number. Look her up on the internet. She’s a beaut. I work with her father. She picks him up from the office. Nice girl. Good, nice girl.”
“You said nice twice.”
“Pretty too.” He wasn’t fazed. “And young. Twenty-seven. Single. Like you. Just one cup of coffee.”
“I gotta go. Bye, Dad. Love you.”
“I’ll tell her you’ll call her next time I see her,” he called after me. I still heard him through the open windows as I pulled away.
I didn’t even give it a second thought. What I thought about on the way back was Heather’s confusion, her interest, her shift in tone the moment she figured out who I was.
But that wasn’t what stuck.
What stuck was that she hadn’t recognized me at all.
The only person who had—without needing a name, without hesitation—was back at the inn. Probably elbow-deep in invoices, muttering about the busted dishwasher in the restaurant that was about to re-open.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was visiting somewhere.
I felt like I was driving home.