shower a little past ten and came back downstairs eagerly, hoping that he would be home. But only the kittens and Harm were there to greet her. She paced. She prowled. And finally, in desperation, she got down the violin and began to play. And the music, as it always did, settled her, calmed her, reinforced her belief that all would be well.
And when the door finally opened at very nearly midnight, she set it down abruptly and spun around to smile at him when he came in.
He looked like hell.
Actually she didn’t suppose he looked a lot different than he looked to most people most days. Stony, silent, serious, supremely self-contained—that was Sebastian ordinarily. That was Sebastian now.
But lately, as Gladys had noticed, the ordinary Iceman Sebastian had thawed a bit. Not just at home, but at work, he’d smiled more. He’d relaxed. He’d been more talkative. He’d even laughed.
Not tonight.
“What happened?”
He stared at her blankly. “Nothing.” His voice was toneless. He shut the door, came into the living room, shrugged off his jacket and sat down. He didn’t look her way. One of the kittens started playing with his shoelace. He looked down at it, expression remote. Almost on auto-pilot he reached down and plucked it off, setting it on the back of the sofa.
No chiding it. No smiling. Nothing.
“Seb,” she said urgently. “What happened? You saw your father…” she ventured.
There was the faintest stiffening in his demeanor. “Did I?” he said. His tone was conversational, light. But in it she heard the opposite.
“You didn’t?”
He gave a quick almost imperceptible shake of his head. “No.” He got up and went into the kitchen and with quick almost jerky movements, he poured himself a glass of water and drank it.
Neely watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed. Tried to read his face. There were lines of strain, a little white bracketing his mouth. When he set the glass down, he shut his eyes, flattened his palms against the countertop and bent his head, dragging in a long harsh breath.
“Seb,” she began again. “Tell me—”
He opened his eyes. They were dark, unfathomable. “Tell you what? There’s nothing to say.” Again that light, almost dismissive tone. A tone that said, it doesn’t matter, when his entire being screamed the opposite.
What was she going to do? Was she just going to stand there and let him get away with it? Was she going to pretend to believe his words because he expected her to.
“Yes, there is,” she said. “There’s plenty to say.”
And she came around the bar so that there was no longer a barrier between them. She walked straight up to him, and saw him, for once, retreat a step so that his back was against the cabinet.
He put his hands out as if to ward her off, but she kept coming until she was toe-to-toe with him, until her eyes were on a level with his chin and close enough that her lashes could brush against it.
“Neel’.” Her name was a warning, a protest. “You don’t want—”
“Yes,” she said, “I do.” And she was conscious even as she said the words that the vow was there within their meaning.
She put her arms around him, wrapping him tight and felt the hard strength of him when his own arms came around her. He buried his face into her hair, drew in a harsh breath and held it even as he held her. She felt a shudder run through him.
She kissed his neck, his jaw, ran her hands up the solid breadth of his back, and pressed herself even closer, needing the connection, knowing that Sebastian needed it, too.
She didn’t know how long they stood there just holding each other in silent communion. And then slowly she become aware of another need—his and hers—a need that had been building for as long as they had been aware of each other.
It was a need she’d rejected, a desire she’d denied—because she hadn’t dared believe that anything would come of it.
She’d been afraid to risk. But she had challenged Sebastian to risk. She had been adamant in her insistence that it was worth it. And she knew he had taken that risk tonight, whatever the outcome had been.
And she dared to believe he’d done it for her.
It seemed only fair—only right—to take a risk of her own.
Now she lifted her face to press her lips along his jawline, to find his mouth, to taste his lips with hers.
His fingers curled against her waist. “Neel’—” The warning was there again in his tone.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s all right.”
He drew back to look down at her, his eyes alight with yearning and yet in them she saw still a hint of caution. “Is it?” he asked her. His hands spanned her waist, held her so that their bodies barely brushed. His mouth tightened. His face was taut. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Yes,” she whispered going up on her toes to brush her lips once more against his, touching them with the tip of her tongue. “Yes, it is.”
He believed her then. Took her at her word. Trusted that she knew what she was doing.
She did.
It was a risk. Loving was always a risk. Until Sebastian she hadn’t dared.
But she couldn’t ask him for a risk she wasn’t willing to take.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He stiffened, looked down into her eyes. “You don’t. You can’t.” His tone wasn’t dismissive any longer. It was as intense as hers.
“Too late.” Neely smiled and once more pressed her mouth to his.
“Neel’,” Seb protested as she once more wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. But his heart wasn’t in it.
Whose would be?
What man in possession of all the proper instincts could possibly be noble enough to walk away from such an offer—such a woman.
He’d craved her, it seemed, forever. Even when he’d believed she was Max’s lover, he’d wanted her. And since he had discovered she wasn’t, the wanting had, if anything, grown stronger. Learning that she was Max’s daughter might have tempered it a bit, given him a scruple or two that he wouldn’t have had otherwise —but even that had not been enough to turn away from her.
He wanted her. Desperately. Intensely. With every fiber of his being. And he’d give her this one last chance to come to her senses, and if she didn’t, she was his.
She didn’t.
On the contrary, she was practically climbing inside his shirt. And Seb almost laughed. “Not here,” he murmured. “We’re going to do this right.”
So saying, he reached down and scooped her up into his arms, then carried her straight down the hall and up the stairs.
“Seb!” She flailed in his arms for a moment, but when he hung on doggedly, she stopped and laughed, shaking her head. “You’ll have a heart attack carrying me up the stairs.”
“I won’t,” Seb assured her—and proved it by making it to the top without even breathing hard. “Whose room?”
“Yours,” she said without hesitation.
He raised a quizzical brow.
“There’re photos of Max and my mother on my dresser. This isn’t any business of theirs.”
There were no photos on Seb’s dresser at all. The room was as austere as his life. It made him a little self-conscious, actually, to let her see it.
He’d