I’m In No Mood For Love (6 page)

“I’ve given you my best deal.”

“He has a trade-in,” Sebastian provided, in an effort to help out the old man. “Right?”

Leo turned his head and looked at him. Ten
minutes later they pulled out of the lot in the old Town Car, on their way back to the carriage house.

“You never tell a salesman that you have a trade-in unless he asks. I just about had him dickered down to where I want him,” Leo said as they left the dealership behind. “You might think you know a thing or two about what tie to wear, but you don’t know anything about buying a car.” He shook his head. “Now I’ll have to cross that dealership off. I’ll never get a good deal there.”

So much for father-son bonding.

After dinner that night, Leo worked in the garden, then went to bed after the ten o’clock news. Sebastian apologized for ruining his potential deal, and Leo smiled and patted his shoulder on his way to bed.

“I’m sorry I got a little hot. I guess we’re just not used to each other’s ways. It’ll take time yet.”

Sebastian wondered if they’d ever get used to “each other’s ways.” He had his doubts. They were both spinning their wheels, fighting to find common ground. But it shouldn’t have been so hard.

Alone in the kitchen, he moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. His life was in his apartment on Mercer Place in Seattle. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a shitload waiting for him there—he
had his own problems to contend with, and he had to pack up his mother’s house in Tacoma. She’d lived in that house for close to twenty years, and getting it ready to put on the market was going to be a real bitch.

His mother had been married and divorced three times by the time he turned ten. Each time, she’d been filled with the promise of happily ever after. Each time, she’d fully expected the marriage to last a lifetime. But every husband had lasted less than a year. The boyfriends in her life hadn’t even stuck around that long. And every time another relationship failed to work out, she’d put Sebastian to bed and cry herself to sleep while he lay awake, hearing her sobbing through the thin walls. Her tears made him cry too. They hurt his chest and made him feel helpless and afraid.

By his sophomore year in high school, Sebastian and his mother had moved half a dozen times. His mother had been a “beauty consultant,” meaning she cut and styled hair. Which made it easy for her to get a job wherever they happened to move, each time hoping for a “new start.” Which also meant a new neighborhood, and Sebastian would have to make new friends all over again.

The summer he turned sixteen, they landed in the small house in North Tacoma. For some
reason—perhaps his mother had grown up or grown weary of moving—she’d decided to stay put in that small house on Eleventh Street. She must have grown weary of men too. She’d stopped dating almost altogether, and instead of putting so much of her energy into relationships, spent time converting the front room of the house into Carol’s Clip Joint—naming it after herself—and outfitting it with two styling stations, shampoo bowls, and drier chairs. Her best friend, Myrna, had always worked alongside his mother, cutting hair, giving perms, and sharing the latest.

At Carol’s Clip Joint, tight curls and superhold had never gone out of fashion, and filled the house with the scent of alkaline, peroxide, and alcohol. Except on Sunday. The salon was closed on Sunday and his mother always made him a big breakfast. For a few hours, blueberry pancakes chased away the scent of perm solution, dyes, and hair spray.

That same year, Sebastian got a job washing dishes at a local restaurant, and after a short time he’d been promoted to night manager. He bought a ’75 Datsun pickup. Faded orange with a crumpled rear fender. From that job, he’d learned the value of hard work and how to get what he wanted. He got his first real girlfriend that year too. Monica Diaz had been two years older than him. Two
very wise years. And from her he’d learned the difference between good sex, great sex, and mind-altering sex.

Sebastian grabbed a beer and moved from the kitchen, his footfalls the only sound in the silent carriage house. His sophomore year in high school, he’d signed up for journalism because he’d registered late and all the other elective classes were full. He’d spent the next three years reporting on the local music scene for the school newspaper. His senior year, he’d been the editor of the paper, but quickly learned that assigning stories and editing wasn’t much fun. He preferred the reporting side of journalism.

He raised the beer to his lips and picked up the television remote on a table resting by his father’s recliner. With his thumb, he flipped from channel to channel. His chest suddenly felt tight and he tossed the remote on the table. How was he going to put his mother’s life neatly into cardboard boxes?

Thinking about packing up her life made his chest cramp. If he were honest with himself, thinking about clearing out that house was one of the reasons he was here in Boise—one of the things that was keeping him up at night.

He moved to a built-in shelf next to the fireplace and reached for the first bound photo album in
the row. He flipped it open. Newspaper articles and magazine clippings fell to the floor and covered his feet. A snapshot of Leo stared back at him from the first page of the album. Leo held a baby in a sagging cloth diaper in his arms. The photo was faded and creased through the middle, and Sebastian assumed it had been taken by his mother. He figured he’d been about six months old at the time, which meant the three of them would have been living in Homedale, a small town east of Boise, and his father would have been working in a dairy.

Like all children of divorce, Sebastian remembered asking his mother why they didn’t live with his father.

“Because your daddy’s lazy,” she’d said. At the time, he hadn’t understood what lazy had to do with them not living together like a family. Later in his life, he would learn that his father wasn’t lazy, he just wasn’t ambitious, and that an unexpected pregnancy had brought two totally different people together. Two people who never should have shook hands, let alone made a baby.

He flipped through the rest of the album filled with different snapshots and school photos. One of the pictures was of him holding a fish just about as big as he’d been at the time. His chest was puffed out and a huge grin showed a missing front tooth.

He bent down on one knee and reached for the clippings. His hand paused as he recognized them as some of his old articles. There was the piece he’d done on the death of Carlos Castaneda, and
Time
articles on the Jarvis heart valve and the murder of James Bird. Seeing all his articles was a shock. He hadn’t known the old man had kept up on his career. He placed the articles back inside the album and stood.

As he slid it back into the first slot, a pair of brass bookends on the mantel caught his attention. Between the shiny gold ducks was a collection of eight paperbacks by author Alicia Grey. He reached for the first two books in the row and pulled them out. The first had a purple cover and featured a man and woman in period clothing. The woman’s red gown was pushed from her shoulders and her breasts were about to pop out of her gown. The man was shirtless and wore tight black pants and boots. In raised gold the title read,
The Devil Pirate’s Embrace.
The second book,
The Pirate’s Captive
, featured a man standing on the bow of a ship with the wind billowing his white puffy shirt. He didn’t have a cutlass, or a pegleg or a patch. Just a Jolly Roger and a woman with her back pressed into his chest. Sebastian replaced one of the books and opened the other. He chuckled as he fanned the pages to the back. Clare stared
back at him from a black and white publicity photo.

“This night is just full of surprises,” he uttered as he read her bio.

Alicia Gray is a graduate of Boise State University and Bennington,
it began, then went on to list her achievements, including something called a RITA
^®
award from Romance Writers of America.
Alicia loves to garden and is waiting for her very own hero to sweep her off her feet.

“Good luck with that,” Sebastian scoffed. A guy would have to be desperate to attempt anything with Clare. Despite his father’s opinion of her, Clare Wingate was a ballbuster, and it was a wise man who kept any part of him away from her.

Where do you think I get my ideas for all the loud, hot, sweaty sex I put in my books?
she’d asked when she decided not to ignore him.
It’s all carefully researched.
A ballbuster with soft curves in all the right places, and a mouth that made a man think of oral sex. Which Sebastian figured was a shame and a total waste.

He flipped to the little teaser page in front and moved to his father’s leather recliner. He pulled the switch on the lamp and read as he sat.

“Holy Christ,” Sebastian swore, and turned to Chapter One. This should put him right to sleep.

C
lare raised her hand and knocked on the red door of the carriage house. Through the dark lenses of her sunglasses, she glanced at her gold watch. It was a little after two in the afternoon, and the relentless sun heated her bare shoulders as she stood on the porch. The temperature hovered at ninety-five, but was bound to reach a hundred.

Earlier, she’d written five pages, walked for half an hour on the treadmill in her spare bedroom, and made a list of names for Leo’s party. For the past few days she’d run herself ragged with planning, but it kept her too busy to think about her life. For which she was grateful, although she’d never admit it to her mother. After she ran the names by Leo, she had to pick up her dry cleaning and buy party
decorations. Then she would cook dinner and wash dishes, which she calculated would keep her busy until six or seven. After that, maybe she’d write some more. Each time she thought of Lonny, she felt a little piece of her heart chip away. Perhaps if she kept herself very busy for the next few months, her broken heart would heal and spare her some of the pain.

She was still waiting for an epiphany. A light to be shed on her life and show her why she’d chosen Lonny. A ta-da moment to explain why she hadn’t seen the truth of her relationship with him.

Clare adjusted the small purse on her shoulder. It hadn’t happened yet.

The door swung open. Light spilled across the threshold and shined into the house. “Holy mother of God,” Sebastian swore as he raised one arm to shield his gaze from the sun.

“Afraid not.”

Beneath his bare arm, he squinted down at her through bloodshot eyes as if he didn’t quite recognize her. He wore the same jeans and Molson T-shirt he’d worn the day before. He was wrinkled and his hair stood up in front. “Clare?” he finally said, his voice rough and sleepy, as if he’d just rolled out of bed.

“Bingo.” Light brown stubble shadowed the lower half of his face, and the shadow from his
arm rested across the seam of his lips. “Did I wake you?”

“I’ve been up for a few.”

“Late night?”

“Yeah.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “What time is it?”

“About a quarter after two. Did you sleep in your clothes?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Out carousing again?”

“Carousing?” He dropped his hands to his sides. “No. I was up all night reading.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him picture books weren’t really considered reading, but she was going to be nice today if it killed her. Calling him a dickhead the other day had felt good. For a while. But by the time she’d pulled into her garage, the elation had worn thin and she’d felt undignified and gauche. The nice thing—the ladylike thing—would be to apologize. She’d kill herself first. “It must have been a good book.”

“It was interesting.” A ghost of a smile curved his mouth.

She didn’t ask what kind of book he’d read. She didn’t really care. “Is your father around?”

“I don’t know.” He stepped aside, and she walked past him into the house. He smelled like bed linen and warm skin, and he was such a big man, he
seemed to dwarf the space around him. Or perhaps it just seemed that way because she was used to Lonny, who stood a few inches taller than her own medium height and was quite thin.

“I searched for him in my mother’s house and he’s not there.” She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and looked at Sebastian as he closed the door. He leaned his back against it, folded his arms across his chest and stared at her feet. Slowly, he lifted his gaze from the toes of her red sandals and up her halter dress with the deep red cherries on it. His attention paused on her mouth before continuing to her eyes. He tilted his head to one side, studying her as if trying to figure something out.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He pushed away from the door and moved by her into the kitchen. His feet were bare. “I just put on a pot of coffee. Want some?”

“No. By two, I’ve usually moved on to Diet Coke.” She followed close behind, her gaze taking in his broad shoulders. The arms of his T-shirt fit snuggly around the bulge of his biceps, and the ends of his sandy blond hair touched the ribbed collar at the base of his neck. There was no doubt about it. Sebastian was a man’s man. A guy. While Lonny had been particular about his clothing, Sebastian slept in his.

“My dad doesn’t drink Diet Coke.”

“I know. He’s an RC Cola man, and I hate RC.”

Sebastian glanced back at her and moved around the old wooden table stacked with notebooks, legal pads, and index cards. A laptop lay open, and a small tape recorder and three cassettes sat next to a BlackBerry. “He’s the only person I know who still drinks RC,” he said as he opened a cupboard and reached for a mug on the top shelf. The bottom edge of his T-shirt pulled up past the waistband of his jeans, riding low on his hips. The elastic band of his underwear looked very white against the tan skin of his lower back.

The memory of his bare behind flashed across her brain, and she raised her gaze to the back of his sleep-tousled hair. That morning at the Double Tree, he hadn’t been wearing underwear. “He’s a very loyal consumer,” she said. The memory of that morning made her want to sink into the floor and hide. She hadn’t had sex with him. While that was a huge relief, she had to wonder what they’d actually done, and how she’d ended up virtually naked. If she thought he’d give her a straight answer, she would ask him to fill in the blank spots.

“More like stubborn,” Sebastian corrected with his back to her. “Very definitely set in his ways.”

But she didn’t believe he’d give her the truth without embellishing it for his own amusement.
Sebastian could not be trusted, but that wasn’t exactly news. “That’s part of his charm.” A few feet from him, she leaned her behind against the table.

Sebastian grabbed the carafe with one hand and poured coffee into the mug he held with the other. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“Yes.” With both hands, she grasped the tabletop at her hips and purposely let her gaze once again slide down the back of his rumpled T-shirt and the long legs of his jeans. She couldn’t help but compare him to Lonny, but supposed it was only natural. Besides the fact that they were both men, they had nothing in common. Sebastian was taller, bigger, and surrounded by a thick testosterone haze. Lonny was shorter, thinner, and had been in touch with his feelings. Perhaps that had been Lonny’s appeal. He’d been nonthreatening. Clare waited for the ta-da bells to ring in her head. They didn’t.

Sebastian set the carafe down, and Clare turned her attention to the tape recorder by her right hand. “Are you writing an article?” she asked. He didn’t answer, and she looked up.

Sunlight spilled through the kitchen window across his shoulder and the side of his face. It poured across the stubble on his cheek and got tangled in his eyelashes. He raised the mug to his lips and watched her as he blew into the coffee.
“Writing? Not really. More like typing and deleting the same opening paragraph.”

“You’re stuck?”

“Something like that.” He took a drink.

“Whenever I get stuck, it’s usually because I’m trying to start a book in the wrong place or I’m going about it from the wrong angle. The more I try to force it, the more I get stuck.”

He lowered the mug, and she expected him to say something deprecating about writing romance. Her grasp on the table tightened as she steeled herself and waited for him to point out to her that what he wrote was important, and to dismiss her books as nothing more than fantasies for bored housewives. Heck, her own mother trivialized her work. She did not expect better from Sebastian Vaughan, of all people.

Instead of launching into a condescending diatribe, however, he looked at her as he had earlier. Like he was trying to figure something out. “Maybe, but I don’t ‘get stuck.’ At least I never have before, and never for this long.”

Clare waited for him to continue. She was ready for him to jump on the literary bandwagon and say something derogatory. She’d been defending herself, her genre, and her readers for so long, she could handle what he threw at her. But he simply drank his coffee, and she tilted her
head to the side and looked at
him
as if she couldn’t figure
him
out.

Now it was his turn to ask, “What?”

“I think I mentioned yesterday that I write romance novels,” she felt compelled to point out.

He raised a brow as he lowered the mug. “Yeah. You mentioned it, along with the fact that you do all your own sexual research.”

That’s right. Dang it. He’d made her mad, and she’d said things she wished she could take back. Things that were coming back to haunt her. Things said in anger that she’d learned long ago to keep behind the happy facade. “And you don’t have one condescending thing to say?”

He shook his head.

“No smarmy questions?”

He smiled. “Just one.” He turned and set the mug on the counter by his hip.

She held up a hand like a traffic cop. “No. I’m not a nymphomaniac.”

His smile turned into a chuckle, laugh lines creasing the corners of his green eyes. “That isn’t the smarmy question, but thanks for clearing that up.” He folded his arms across his rumpled T-shirt. “The real question is: where do you
do
all your research?”

Clare dropped her hand to her side. She figured she had a couple ways to answer that question.
She could get offended and tell him to grow up, or she could relax. He seemed to be playing nice today, but this was Sebastian. The man who’d lied to her about having sex with him.

“Are you afraid to tell me?” he goaded her.

She wasn’t afraid of Sebastian. “I have a special room in my house,” she lied.

“What’s in the room?”

He looked totally serious. As if he actually believed her. “Sorry, I can’t divulge that sort of information to a reporter.”

“I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

“Sorry.”

“Come on. It’s been a long time since anyone’s told me anything juicy.”

“Told or done?”

“What’s in your kinky sex room, Clare?” he persisted. “Whips, chains, swings, slings, latex body suits?”

Slings? Holy heck. “You seem to know a lot about kinky sex closets.”

“I know I’m not allergic to latex. Other than that, I’m a fairly straightforward guy. I’m not into being beaten or trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.” He pushed away from the counter and took a few silent steps toward her. “Restraints?”

“Handcuffs,” she said as he came to stand a foot in front of her. “Fuzzy, because I’m a nice person.”

He laughed like she’d said something really amusing. “Nice? Since when?”

So, maybe she hadn’t always been nice to Sebastian, but he loved to provoke her. She straightened and looked up past the stubble on his chin and into his green eyes. “I try to be nice.”

“Babe, you might want to put a little more effort into that.”

She felt her temper rise a bit, but refused to take the bait. Not today. She smiled and patted him on his rough cheek. “I’m not going to fight with you, Sebastian. There’s nothing you can do to provoke me today.”

He turned his face and lightly bit the heel of her palm. His green eyes stared into hers and he asked, “Are you sure about that?”

Her fingers curled against his scratchy cheek as a disturbing awareness curled in her stomach. She lowered her hand but could feel the warmth of his mouth and the sharp edge of his teeth in her palm. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure of anything. “Yes.”

“What if I nibbled…” He raised his hand and touched the corner of her mouth. “…here?” The tips of his fingers slid down her jaw and brushed the side of her neck. “And here.” He slid his fingers down the edge of her halter dress and across her clavicle. “And here.”

Her breathing stopped in her chest as she stared
up into his face. “Sounds painful,” she managed as shock tightened her throat. It had to be shock, and not the heat of his touch brushing her throat.

“It won’t hurt a bit.” He raised his gaze from her neck to her eyes. “You’ll like it, trust me.”

Trust Sebastian? The boy who’d only been nice to her so he could tease and torture her? Who’d only pretended to like her so he could throw mud on her clean dress and make her cry? “I learned a long time ago not to trust you.”

He dropped his hand to his side. “When was that?”

“The day you wanted me to show you the river and threw mud on my new dress,” she said, and figured he’d no doubt forgotten that day long ago.

“That dress was too white.”

“What?” How could something be
too
white? If it wasn’t white, it was dingy.

He took a few steps back and grabbed his coffee. “You were always too perfect. Your hair. Your clothes. Your manners. It just wasn’t natural. The only time you were any fun at all was when you were messed up and doing something you thought you shouldn’t.”

She pointed at her chest. “I was plenty fun.” He lifted a dubious brow, and she insisted, “I’m still fun. All my friends think so.”

“Clare, your hair was too tight then and you’re
wound too tight now.” He shook his head. “Either your friends are lying to you to spare your feelings or they’re as much fun as a prayer circle.”

She wasn’t going to argue about how much fun she and her friends were, and she dropped her hand to her side. “You’ve been in a prayer circle?”

“You find that hard to believe?” His brows lowered and he scowled at her for about two seconds before the corner of his mouth tilted up and gave him away. “When I was in college, one of the first stories I was sent out to cover involved a group of evangelicals recruiting on campus. They were so boring, I fell asleep on a folding chair.” He shrugged. “It probably didn’t help that I was hung over as hell.”

“Sinner.”

“You know that old saying about finding something you’re good at and sticking with it.” The other side of his mouth slid up into a wicked smile, leaving little doubt that he’d turned sinning into an art form.

Her heart gave a little flutter, whether she wanted it to flutter or not. And she didn’t. Clare reached for the glasses on top of her head, and her hair slid over her ear and across her cheek. “If you see your father, will you tell him I need to talk to him about the guest list for his party?” she asked, purposely
turning the conversation away from thoughts of sinning.