Читать книгу Billionaire Bosses Collection - Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 63
ОглавлениеIT WAS a perfect day for a wedding.
A storybook sort of day, warm but not sweltering, breezy but not gusting. And there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which, for the Pacific Northwest, was nothing short of amazing.
And one look told Neely that Vangie was going to be a beautiful bride. She was a pretty girl to begin with, but today, with her honey colored hair pulled up into a sophisticated knot, her long white dress elegant and simple and her eyes absolutely sparkling, she looked exquisite and every bit the radiantly happy bride she was.
But she wasn’t only happy, she was generous and kind.
Neely had been so proud of her this morning while she was getting ready and Sebastian came in. Despite her mother and stepmothers wringing their hands and trying to make her stay right where she was so they could get her train arranged just so, Vangie had dashed across the room to throw her arms around her brother.
“Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t say it the other day, but I should have. Thank you for trying…for trying to talk to Daddy and—” she stepped back and, still clasping his hands in hers, looked up at him with a tremulous smile “—for everything. You are the best.”
He was the best. Neely knew that. And she loved him for the smile he had managed for Vangie.
“Anything I can do for you,” he’d said. And Neely knew—they all knew—it was nothing more than the truth. Even though he hadn’t been able to produce their father, he’d done everything else.
While he’d obviously been the one his sister had turned to for months, this week it became crystal clear that he was the one the whole family turned to as well.
He was always willing to talk to them and listen to them—whether it was about Vangie’s silver and rose mint boxes or which medical schools Milos should apply to. He listened to his stepmother Gina fret about his brother Gabriel’s umpteen girlfriends and he spent a morning taking his youngest sister to the office and to a couple of his job sites so she could learn what being an architect entailed.
He managed to defuse half a dozen wedding-related crises as well. He was the one who stepped in and arranged for the limo when the one Garrett had contacted had a conflict. He was the one who saw to it that all his stepmothers had corsages when nobody else had. This morning he was the one who tied all his brothers’ ties.
And right after they got out of the car, he’d said to Neely, “Stand still.” And he used masking tape to go over her dress and make sure there was no lingering rabbit or kitten or dog hair on Neely’s dress.
“A master of details,” she’d teased him, grinning.
He’d smiled that crooked half smile of his and said, “Someone’s got to do it.”
Neely understood now that that someone was always Sebastian.
And now she sat with the wedding guests in rows of white chairs on the lawn overlooking the sound, waiting to watch him do yet another task—this one a task he had every right to—walking his sister down the aisle and giving her to her groom.
She hoped he would smile when he did so. He had the most beautiful smile. She wasn’t treated to it often. But he’d smiled at her the night they’d made love. He’d smiled that smile the next morning when he’d awakened with his arms around her.
And she dared to hope that she would see that same amazing smile someday soon at their wedding when he watched her walk down an aisle toward him.
Still, it was too soon to think about that.
The string quintet—one of the few things Sebastian had not had a hand in arranging—began at that moment to play the processional. Neely stood and turned with everyone else to watch as the bridesmaids proceeded in measured steps across the grass to where a handsome nervous Garrett and his grinning best man waited with the minister.
Little Sarah came first, her head high, her eyes straight ahead, her expression solemn, but every now and then Neely saw a flicker of a smile very like Sebastian’s on her face. Then came Jenna, her ash-blonde hair a striking contrast to the rest of the girls. The triplets—Ariadne, Alexa and Anastasia—followed. Neely still had no idea which was which, but Sebastian never seemed to have trouble telling them apart.
“Not now I don’t,” he’d said when she’d marveled at his ability. “But when they were little it was like three little indistinguishable dark-haired devils. Seriously scary.”
There was a pause in the music after the last of the triplets had reached the halfway mark of the procession, and then the quintet picked up the volume and plunged into the bridal music once more.
Everyone turned and twisted their heads and craned their necks to get their first glimpse of the bride.
Everyone except Neely. She was twisting her head and craning her neck to catch a first glimpse of Sebastian resplendent in black tie, white shirt and tuxedo jacket.
So she was poleaxed to see an older, craggier tuxedo-clad Savas male walking with Vangie up the path instead!
The bride was absolutely radiant, beaming at everyone, looking from side to side as she walked slowly toward her waiting groom. And the man was smiling happily and looking at her dotingly—as if he had a right to be there.
In one way, she supposed he did. She knew exactly who he was—Phillip Savas, the man who had given her life. He was her father in name. But who had been there for her every single day?
She looked around desperately for Sebastian. Where was he?
Not with his sister, that was certain. She had her father to give her away just as she’d wanted.
The way it should be.
Neely could hear the words echoing in her brain. They were the words Vangie had used. And Sebastian had reiterated them even as he’d refused at first to make the effort.
“She wants a normal wedding. A normal family,” he’d said. “That’s all she’s ever wanted.”
And this was what she wanted? A father who showed up for a few brief moments and stepped in at the last minute to give her away? As if it were his right when in fact he’d really given her away years ago!
It wasn’t his right! Neely was outraged. How dared he? Where had he come from?
And most important of all, Where was Sebastian?
She should have been watching the ceremony. But she barely noticed that Philip had handed his daughter off to Garrett and had gone to stand by his string of ex-wives. She was craning her neck trying to find Sebastian.
Ah, there. At the very back she spotted his dark head. He was perfectly composed, though she was sure she wouldn’t have been. He stood ramrod straight, looking for all the world like one of the ushers and not the man who had every right to have walked his sister up the aisle.
The wedding was short and sweet—at least Neely supposed it was. She barely noticed. Her mind was consumed with indignation for Sebastian, with annoyance toward his father. No one else seemed to notice.
The Savases looked like a normal family on the eldest daughter’s wedding day: mother with a tear-streaked smiling face, father beaming as he bestowed her hand on her groom, the bride joyful, the groom solemn.
And where the eldest brother was no one cared.
Except her.
Neely cared. And she barely waited until after the ceremony to slip away and go to him. But when she looked around, he wasn’t there. Vangie and Garrett, his parents and hers were in a reception line and everyone was lined up to go past and congratulate them.
Sebastian should have been there, too. If anyone deserved congratulations for getting Vangie married it was him. But she didn’t see him anywhere. She could have waited in the reception line and asked Vangie, but judging from the happily dazed expression on Vangie’s face, she wouldn’t have known.
She did ask Gabriel, “Where’s your brother?”
But Gabriel just shrugged and looked blank. So did Milos and the triplets. “He’s around somewhere,” Jenna said, waving her hand toward the hundreds of people milling about on the lawn.
It was Sarah who pointed. “He’s over there.”
Following her pointing finger, Neely spied Sebastian on the far side of the gathering. He was standing with a couple she’d never seen before. They were talking and he was listening. He had his hands tucked into the pockets of his black trousers. His dark head was bent.
He didn’t look shattered. He looked perfectly fine. But Neely couldn’t help cutting through the crowds of people to get to him.
“Ah, there you are!” She smiled brilliantly as she came up to him, and he lifted his gaze and smiled. It wasn’t the best Sebastian Savas smile, the one that could curl her toes. But it was warm and welcoming and he reached out a hand and drew her to him, looping an arm over her shoulders.
“This is Neely Robson,” he told the other couple, and to Neely he said, “My cousin Theo and his wife, Martha.”
He introduced her to more cousins and aunts and uncles, and was completely affable and pleasant. He never once mentioned his father, never said a word about the switch. Of course she knew Sebastian well enough that she didn’t expect him to make a fuss about it, but she thought he might say something to her in the few moments they were alone.
But 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 the dance floor to the table where his sister sat with Garrett. “Dance with me.”
She had danced with her husband, her father (of course) and Garrett’s father. But then she had sat down, preferring to simply watch and share the day with her husband. But now she looked up, startled, then smiled up at Seb, delighted. “Of course. We didn’t get to before, did we?”
Before—when they’d been supposed to follow Vangie and Garret’s bridal waltz, Philip had danced with her instead.
“No,” Seb said shortly and held out a hand to her. Beaming, she took the floor with him.
Over her head he could see his father smiling and talking to Neely. He was going all out to charm her. Sebastian recognized all the moves, the flatteringly intent expression, the easy flirtatiousness.
Neely’s back was to him, so Seb wasn’t able to gauge her reaction. But his father had never failed to win a woman over yet.
He hadn’t expected Philip to cut in on them. He should have, he supposed. It was the sort of blatant, flagrant attention-seeking thing his father would do. Seb knew he should have seen it coming when Philip kept trying to catch his eye, as if they had something to say to each other.
He’d ignored it because he had nothing to say to Philip. And whatever his father might have to say, Sebastian had no desire to listen.
Now he didn’t have to talk to Sebastian. He had a more malleable captive audience. And clearly he was making the most of it. He was a better dancer than his son and he twirled Neely in his arms and spun her around and she laughed.
Sebastian stepped on Vangie’s foot. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Vangie was in a mood to be pleased by everything. “It’s been a gorgeous wonderful day, hasn’t it?”
“Mm.” He could see Neely talking now. Philip’s brows lifted, he opened his mouth, then shut it again. Neely kept talking.
“I couldn’t believe it when Daddy showed up. Thank you for that.”
“Me? I didn’t do it.” God forbid.
“You tried,” Vangie said. “He told me he got your message. Told me you said he should be here.”
“He never responded.”
“Yes, he did,” Vangie said happily. “He came.”
And as always, just like bloody Caesar, Philip saw and then he conquered.
Seb’s jaw grew tight. He tensed as he watched Philip spin Neely round again, then start talking while Neely cocked her head and listened.
Was this song never going to end?
Then he heard Neely’s laughter. He turned his head to see her smiling up into his father’s eyes. He stopped dead.
Vangie tripped over his feet. “Sorry,” she said. “My fault.”
“No.” But he couldn’t do this anymore. “Let me take you back so you can sit down before I walk all over you.”
He took her arm and steered her back to Garrett before the music even ended. She sat down and looked up at him to smile again. “Thanks, Seb. For everything.”
“For stepping on your feet.” He smiled wryly as the music finally came to an end and Neely still stood with his father on the far side of the dance floor deep in conversation. Then she smiled, nodded and Philip leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
Vangie squeezed his hands, drawing his attention back to her. “No. Thanks for making my dreams come true.”
“You’re welcome,” he said because it was the right thing to do.
Some people’s dreams did come true, he supposed as he walked away.
Frankly Seb found it hard to imagine.
“It was the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to,” Neely said on their way home.
“Uh-huh.”
She slanted him a glance. His gaze was, of course, on the road. It was late—past eleven—and they were exhausted, but fortunately they were nearly home. She’d been carrying the conversation all the way. Sebastian’s contributions had, like the last one, been delivered in single syllables and a monotone.
Of course he’d done so much to make it a great day for his sister that she didn’t expect him to talk a lot. But he’d been increasingly quiet, not just since they’d left the reception but since the dance his father had cut in on.
Now, as he turned down the hill to the parking area by the dock, she said quietly, “It’s actually hard to hate him.”
She didn’t say whom. She knew she didn’t have to.
Sebastian’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t know.” His tone was cold.
At least, Neely thought, it wasn’t that light dismissive tone that made her crazy.
“You don’t hate him,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
“I don’t give a damn about him,” Sebastian said roughly. He turned into a parking space and cut the engine.
“Not true.”
His jaw worked. In the streetlight she could see his knuckles whiten as his fingers clenched.
“He wanted to talk to you, not me,” Neely said quietly.
He didn’t look at her, just stared straight ahead. “He could have talked to me four days ago.”
“He really did get delayed in Japan.”
Sebastian slapped his hands on the steering wheel. “Don’t make excuses for him!”
“I’m not making excuses!”
“No?” He turned to glare at her. “What do you call it?”
“Sanity?” she suggested. “Common sense?”
“To believe everything he tells you? To let yourself be conned?”
“I’m not letting myself be conned! He said he wanted to apologize. You wouldn’t let him get close.” That was more or less what he had said. Plus he’d said he wanted to get to know the woman who seemed to have captured his oldest son’s heart.
Of course she didn’t say that now.
Sebastian was already snorting his disbelief at what she did say. He jerked open the car door and came around to open hers, but Neely got out by herself and stalked down the dock toward the houseboat.
Sebastian caught up with her. “I don’t want him close,” he said flatly.
“I think you made that perfectly clear. Look,” she said, rounding on him by their front door, “I’m not condoning your father’s behavior. I think it stinks, but—”
“Did you tell him that? You didn’t, did you?” he demanded furiously. “Of course you didn’t! You’re just like all the rest!”
He stuck his key in the lock and shoved the door open. Harm bounded up to meet them. Kittens tumbled sleepily down the stairs. Sebastian ignored them all, just held the door and simultaneously glowered accusingly at her.
Disregarding her dress and everything but the pain in her heart and the tears that stung her eyes, Neely marched past him and knelt to wrap her arms around the dog. She hugged him hard, pressed her face into his short soft fur. Drew a breath. Drew strength.
Then she stood again and turned to face Sebastian. “I did, you know,”
He stared. “Did what?”
“Told him it stunk, what he’d done. Told him he hurt you. Told him what a jerk he was.” She glared at him defiantly.
Sebastian looked stunned. And then he shook his head in disbelief. “Sure you did. That’s why he was laughing. Why you were! Why he danced you around and kissed your cheek!”
There was a short silence and then she said, “You don’t believe me.”
He hunched his shoulder. “I saw what I saw.”
She slowly shook her head. “No, you saw what you wanted to see.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared stonily at her.
“You don’t believe me. You don’t trust me.” Neely felt cold. She felt gutted. She felt as if her determined and furious attack on Sebastian’s father, which he had certainly not been expecting when he’d asked for a dance, had all been for naught.
She’d had to give Philip credit. He’d first looked as stunned as Sebastian when she’d told him what she thought of him. But he’d listened. He’d shut his mouth and heard her out. And then he’d talked.
Of course she hadn’t believed every word he said. Of course she knew a sound byte when she heard one. But she also heard some truth in the desperation Philip Savas had expressed. She’d heard a man who had made a mess of most of the relationships in his life, a man who’d lost the respect of his eldest son and knew it. She heard a man who could be both self-aware and self-deprecating, a man who understood his own weaknesses but who hadn’t yet figured out how to compensate for them.
By the end of the dance yes, they’d laughed. But it had been equally tempting to cry—for him and for his son.
“Don’t tell me my father didn’t try to bring you around to his way of thinking,” Sebastian said grimly.
“Of course he did. In his ham-handed way, he wants you in his life. He wants us to design a hotel for him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! As if I would ever—”
“You could,” Neely said stubbornly. “We could.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ll never! And you won’t either if you want whatever we’ve got between us to work.”
“What do we have between us, Seb?” she asked. She was almost afraid to, not really wanting to face the answer. “Do we have love? Commitment? Forever?”
His jaw tightened. “We have a good thing. You know that.”
“I thought so,” Neely agreed slowly. “Now I’m not so sure.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Why not? Because I won’t knuckle under to my perennially absent father’s demand?”
Neely shook her head. “This isn’t about your father.”
“No? Then what is it about?”
“It’s about whether you’re ever going to trust me to be on your side. Even when I challenge you, I’m still on your side. But you didn’t believe I’d be there for you with Carmody, either.”
“This isn’t about Carmody!”
“No, it isn’t. It’s about trust, Sebastian.”
He shook his head. “If that’s the way you feel, we don’t have anything else to say. I’m giving you everything I’ve got,” he said flatly. “I can’t give you any more.”
“Can’t?” Neely said quietly, looking at him and feeling her heart breaking. “Or won’t?”
