when they were alone he stole a kiss, and while it was a perfectly discreet kiss in public, it meant she didn’t get to find out what happened.
“Are you all right?” she asked him briefly.
He blinked, surprised. “I’m fine.”
“Your father—”
But Sebastian simply turned away. “Let’s get something to eat.”
They got something to eat. They talked to a myriad Savas aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. Sebastian was perfectly polite, completely composed. He didn’t seem like an Iceman on the surface—not the way he used to appear at work sometimes—but beneath the surface charm, Neely began to suspect that the ice was there.
She caught a sense of it in his tone of voice. It was that easy, polite and on-the-surface-pleasant tone, yet there was in it, too, a distance, a determined emotional detachment.
Yes, Sebastian agreed with everyone who said so, Vangie was a beautiful bride and Garrett was a lucky man. He allowed that it was terrific that their whole family could be here. And he even nodded and said, yes, wasn’t it nice that they all—even the exwives—got on so well.
“Philip always did know how to pick ’em,” his father’s older brother, Socrates, said cheerfully. Socrates’s son, Theo, winced at the comment, but Sebastian didn’t bat an eye.
But he wasn’t, Neely started to understand as time went on, quite as sanguine as he seemed. It was unobtrusive but apparent, to her at least—though she was sure she was the only one who noticed—that he was careful to keep a couple hundred people between himself and his father at all times.
Not that it was difficult. Philip Savas was clearly a charming, gregarious man. He was every bit as handsome as his son with a more affable outgoing manner. In situations like this Sebastian was pleasant but quiet. He didn’t have the innate ease his father did with social settings. Wherever Philip went, people were smiling and laughing, beaming at him, shaking his hand, clapping him on the back.
His children—except for Sebastian—flocked around him, eager for fatherly attention. Even his ex-wives seemed to preen under his benevolent eye.
Philip was in his element. He paid attention to them all, charmed them all—his oft-neglected family, the multitude of wedding guests and, of course, Garrett’s family as well. Her father’s presence and his behavior was everything Vangie had wanted.
Neely found it interesting, though, that even as he conversed with all of them, his gaze kept shifting toward Sebastian. At first she thought she might have imagined it. But the more she watched, the more often she saw Philip’s glance move their way. As he chatted his way from group to group, he seemed to be edging closer and closer to his eldest son.
Sebastian never looked his way. He kept a possessive hand on Neely’s arm or looped his over her shoulders, but his focus was on whichever friend, relative or guest was talking with him.
And yet, somehow, without Neely quite realizing how, Sebastian managed to move them further away. It was a dance of pursuit and avoidance. Never directly acknowledged by father or son.
Once Philip caught her eye and smiled at her. She supposed it was even a genuine smile, but it couldn’t hold a candle to his son’s. She didn’t smile back, but she did say to Sebastian, “I think your father wants to talk to you.”
But Sebastian acted like he didn’t hear, instead spinning her onto the small dance floor and taking her in his arms. “Let’s dance.”
Oh, yes. It was a slow dance, one that allowed Neely to loop her arms around his neck while his held her close to his chest. They moved together, swayed, shifted, shuffled.
Neely closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him—the piney aftershave, the starch of his shirt, a hint of the sea, something uniquely Sebastian. She felt the touch of his lips to her hair, felt his arms tighten around her. And she savored it, stored away the moment and knew she would always remember this.
“May I cut in?”
Neely’s head jerked up as Sebastian’s arms went stiff around her. They both looked around to see Philip just behind Sebastian, his hand raised from apparently having tapped his son’s shoulder, a hopeful smile on his handsome face.
Sebastian seemed to turn to stone. He had certainly stopped breathing. Neely breathed, but what she was breathing was righteous anger at the same time she realized that there was no way she could make a scene in the middle of Vangie’s wedding.
Everything had been picture perfect so far. She couldn’t ruin it by telling Sebastian’s father exactly what she thought of him. And even more clearly she couldn’t allow Sebastian to do what she suspected he itched to do. Not that she blamed him.
But punching out his father’s lights in the middle of his sister’s wedding was not the “normal” family behavior that would endear him to Vangie—or anyone else.
She unclasped her fingers and stroked the back of his neck. He didn’t speak, didn’t even move—except for the tick of a muscle in his jaw and a sort of vibrato tremor that ran through his limbs.
Neely ran her hand down his arm and smiled her best well-brought-up smile. “How do you do?” she said. “I’m Neely Robson. And you must be Mr. Savas.” She did not say, You must be Sebastian’s father.
“Call me Philip,” the older man said. He glanced at Sebastian. “I’m sure you don’t mind if I make the acquaintance of your lovely friend.”
“Sebastian and I are living together,” Neely said firmly. So maybe not in the traditional sense, but she wanted it clear they were not merely friends. As if anyone could think so given the way they’d been dancing.
“Of course,” Philip said genially. “My son doesn’t believe in marriage.”
“I wonder why,” Sebastian said through his teeth. They were the first words he’d spoken since Philip had cut in.
Philip only laughed. “Well, I promise not to propose to Miss Robson. How about that?” His tone was light and jokey but what was going on between them was no laughing matter.
“Don’t worry. I’d say no,” Neely said in an equally light tone. But just as she did so, the music ended, and she breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the whole problem might have been avoided.
But the quintet immediately went into the next number and Philip held out a hand to her. “This one will be mine, then, I think.”
Sebastian didn’t move. His fingers curled into a fist. Neely pressed her hand down on his arm. “One dance, Mr. Savas,” she said evenly. And she gave Sebastian’s forearm a squeeze.
He looked at her hand on his arm, then he raised his gaze to hers, his eyes as hard as green granite, his mouth flat and uncompromising.
Neely pressed her own lips together and raised her eyebrows, then suggested gently. “Why don’t you dance with Vangie? I’ll bet she’d like that.”
Sebastian’s jaw seemed locked. Only his eyes moved—from her to his father, then back again.
But finally he gave a curt nod and released her. “Enjoy yourself.”
He should have known.
It was just like Philip to breeze in at the last minute and act like he’d meant to be there all along.
“Got delayed in Japan,” was all he’d said.
“For four days?” Sebastian couldn’t mask his disbelief.
But of course it didn’t matter. Daddy was here now, and that was what mattered to Vangie. To his brothers and sisters. To all the stupid stepmothers. To everyone.
Except him.
And he frankly didn’t give a damn.
Now he stalked across