Adele laughed and set her empty glass on the table. “I bet you were cute running around in your little dresses and polished shoes.”
“No. I wasn’t. I looked like a bug.”
Sebastian was conspicuously silent.
“Honey, it’s better to be a homely child and a beautiful adult than a beautiful child and a homely adult,” Maddie pointed out in an effort to comfort Clare. “I have a cousin who was a gorgeous little girl, but she is one of the ugliest women you don’t ever want to lay your eyes on. Once her nose started to grow, it just didn’t stop. You may have started out a little short on looks, but you’re certainly a beautiful woman.”
“Thank you.” Clare bit her bottom lip. “I think.”
“You’re welcome.” Maddie set her glass on the table and stood. “I’ve got to get going.”
“You do?”
“Me too,” Adele announced. “I have a date.”
Clare stood. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Well, today is about you, and I didn’t want to talk about my date when your life isn’t so great.”
After both women said their good-byes to Sebastian, Clare walked them to the front door.
“Okay. What is between you and Sebastian?” Maddie asked just above a whisper as she stepped out onto the porch.
“Nothing.”
“He looks at you like there’s something more.”
Adele added, “When you left the room to get his beer, his gaze followed you.”
Clare shook her head. “Which doesn’t mean a thing. He was probably hoping I’d trip and fall or something equally mortifying.”
“No.” Adele shook her head as she reached into her purse for her keys. “He looked at you like he was trying to picture you naked.”
Clare didn’t point out that he didn’t have to try. Pretty much, he already knew.
“And while I would normally find that disturbing in a man, it was really hot when he did it.” Maddie also dug around in her purse for her keys. “So, I think you should go for it.”
“You need a rebound man.” Adele took a step off the porch. “He’d be perfect in that capacity.”
Maddie nodded and followed Adele down the sidewalk toward their cars, parked in the driveway. “You can tell by looking at the man that he has heft.”
“Good-bye, you two,” she said, and closed the door behind her. As far as Clare was concerned, Maddie was preoccupied with heft, probably because she hadn’t been anywhere near heft in several years. And Adele…Well, she had always suspected that Adele sometimes lived in the fantasyland in which she wrote.
Eight
When Clare walked into the living room, Sebastian stood with his back to her, gazing up at a portrait of her and her mother taken when Clare had been six. “You were cuter than I remember,” he said.
“That was retouched several times.”
He chuckled as he turned his attention to a photo of Cindy, all groomed and polished in her pink hair bow. “This must be your wussy-looking mutt.”
Cindy was AKC certified and belonged to the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America. Hardly a mutt. “Yes. Mine and Lonny’s, but he took her when he left.” Looking at the photo made her miss her dog a lot.
He opened his mouth to say more, but shook his head and glanced about the room instead. “This is a lot like your mother’s house.”
Her house didn’t look anything like her mother’s. Her tastes were much more Victorian while her mother’s tastes leaned toward the French classics. “How’ s that?”
“Lots of stuff.” His gaze landed on her. “But your house is more girly-girl. Like you.”
He set his beer on the mantel. “I have something for you, and I didn’t want to take it out in front of your friends. Just in case you hadn’t mentioned that night at the Double Tree.” He reached into the front pocket of his cargo pants. “I believe this is yours.”
He held up her diamond earring between his fingers. Clare didn’t know which was more stunning, that he’d found the earring and brought it to her or that he hadn’t mentioned it in front of her friends. Both gestures were uncharacteristically thoughtful. Nice, even.
He took her hand in his and placed the diamond earring in her palm. “I found it on your pillow that morning.”
The heat from his hand seeped into her skin and spread to the tips of her fingers. The sensation was disturbing, and as unwanted as the memory of what he’d been wearing, or rather, not been wearing, which seeped into her head and got stuck in her brain. “I thought I’d lost this for good.” She looked up into his eyes. There was something purely physical about Sebastian. A combination of cool strength and hot sexual energy that was impossible to ignore. “I would have had a difficult time matching it.”
“I kept forgetting to give it to you when you were at your mother’s.”
His thumb brushed hers and heat spread to her palm. She closed her hand into a fist to hold the hot tingles inside, pressing her fingers tightly together to keep the feeling from traveling to her wrist and spreading across her chest. Too late, she pulled her hand away. She was old enough to recognize the warmth brushing across her flesh. She didn’t want to feel anything for Sebastian. Or any man, for that matter. Nothing. She’d just finished a two-year relationship. It was too soon, but this feeling had nothing to do with deep emotion and everything to do with lust. “Tell me what happened in the Double Tree Saturday night.”
“I did.”
She took a step back. “No. Not everything. From the time you found me sitting on a bar stool talking to a toothless man in a wife beater until I woke up naked, something more had to have happened.”
He smiled as if he found something she’d said amusing. The smile chilled the warm little tug of lust. “I’ll tell you, if you tell me what you and your friends were celebrating.”
“What makes you think we were celebrating anything?”
He pointed to the champagne. “I’m guessing that bottle cost someone a hundred and thirty dollars. Nobody drinks Dom Perignon for the hell of it. Plus, I just met your friends, so don’t give me that crap about a prayer circle.”
“How do you know how much the champagne cost?”
“I’m a reporter. I have an incredible capacity for minutiae. Your friend with the curly hair said today was about you. So, don’t make me work too hard for the answer, Clare.”
She folded her arms beneath her breasts. Why did she care if he knew about the HIV test? He already knew she’d planned to take one. “I went to the doctor today and…remember Monday when I talked to you about getting tested?”
“For HIV?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t quite look him in the eyes and lowered her gaze to the sunglasses hooked to the neck of his T-shirt. “Well, I found out that I was negative today.”
“Ah. That’s good news.”
“Yes.”
He placed his fingers beneath her chin and brought her gaze up to his. “Nothing.”
“What?”
“We didn’t do anything. Not anything fun, anyway. You cried until you passed out, and I raided your minibar.”
“That’s it? How did I end up naked?”
“I thought I told you.”
He’d told her a lot of things. “Tell me again.”
