As we go inside, I realize that neither of us answered the question.
Are we going to the Hamptons together because of the contract?
Or in spite of it?
25
MATT
Friday Afternoon, October 6
Well. Shit.
My weekend just got a hell of a lot more complicated.
Wordlessly, I hold out my phone to Sabrina so she can see the text message that’s just come through.
We’re standing in The Sams’ kitchen at their place in the Hamptons, sipping a glass of champagne to kick off what we’d expected to be a long weekend of make-believe in front of two bosses and a billionaire.
Instead, I’m bracing for Sabrina’s irritation as she silently reads the text.
She hands the phone back to me and takes a sip of champagne. “Well. I guess that means I don’t need to freak out about the fact that Juno’s already put her muddy paws all over the duvet in the master bedroom.”
“I can’t believe they canceled,” I say, still distracted by the message from Samantha. “Who the hell does that?”
“Maybe they thought they were doing you a favor,” she says, going to the fridge for the champagne bottle. “They probably figured that if the prospective client couldn’t come, there was no reason for the four of us to suffer through the awkwardness of small talk.”
I ignore her placating. “And what kind of bullshit is ‘something came up’? It’s the oldest, lamest blow off in the books.”
“So you’ll woo Jarod some other way,” she says, reaching across the counter to top off my glass.
I put a hand out to stop her. “I shouldn’t. Not if I’m driving back.”
“No way,” she says, batting my hand away and refilling the glass. “I am not getting back in the car with that dog just yet.”
I laugh at the memory of Juno wailing the entire ride from the Upper East Side to Southampton. “You’d think she’d never been in a car before.”
“She probably hasn’t,” Sabrina pointed out. “I don’t own a car. Her vet’s within walking distance, so I’ve never needed to put her in a cab or subway. And I got her from a shelter in Harlem when she was a young puppy.”
“Where is the monster, anyway?” I ask, looking around the lavish beach home for the dog.
“Outside. I decided she’d be better off digging a hole in the sand than your bosses’ bed.”
“She won’t run away?”
Sabrina shakes her head and walks to the back door that opens onto the beach. “Watch this.”
She lets out a short, no-nonsense whistle, and not thirty seconds later, a wet, sandy dog bounds toward her. Sabrina holds up a hand before the dog can burst inside the house, and Juno plants her butt down on the porch, tail wagging wildly as she waits for praise.
“Good girl,” Sabrina says in a voice I’ve never heard her use before. It’s adoring and a little goofy, and I can’t help but smile as she squats down to pet her dog.
Sabrina’s wearing an expensive-looking red sweater and light-gray slacks, but she doesn’t so much as flinch when Juno sets her paws on Sabrina’s knee and goes in for a slobbery on-the-cheek kiss.
“Okay, that’s plenty of love,” Sabrina says after a moment, laughing as she pushes the dog away. “Go continue your beach exploration.”
Juno bounds away again, and I give Sabrina an admiring look. “Is there anyone you don’t have completely wrapped around your finger, ready to do your bidding with a simple whistle?”
She gives a coy smile. “Well. I’m still working on you.”
I’m not so sure. Every time I’m with her—hell, every time I look at her—it becomes harder and harder to think about going back to the way we were.
For the first time, I truly understand why Sabrina put her no-hookup rule into place. And though I don’t regret violating the rule in every pleasurable way possible in recent days, I’m no longer entirely confident in what we’re doing. Or why we’re doing it.
I should be dying to get back to the city, back to my real life, now that Lanham and my bosses have canceled, but instead, this is what feels real. The thought is both compelling and terrifying.
“So, how long does she need?” I ask, nodding to where Juno disappeared. “I’d like to start back before it gets dark.”
Her glass pauses halfway to her lips, and her eyes reflect disappointment, though she responds with her usual tart sass. “Damn, you really have gotten old. Don’t worry, Grandpa. We’ll get you home before supper.”
“I’m just saying, if there’s nobody here—”
“Right, I get it. No point in putting on the show with no audience,” she interrupts. “I wrote the contract, remember?”
“Sabrina.”
She sets her champagne on the kitchen table. “I’m going to take a quick walk. I’ll call Juno in on my way back, and we can get going as soon as I get her cleaned up.”
I grit my teeth. I know her well enough to know she’ll walk out the door no matter what I say, so I stay silent and let her go.
I start to sip my champagne, but I no longer want it. I set it aside and pull a beer out of the fridge instead. Popping the cap, I wander out onto the porch, scanning the beach until I see Sabrina’s slim figure in the red sweater, the big dog running long laps around her with a huge stick extending on either side of her head.
For a painful moment, I feel a fierce longing to join them. To be welcome to join them.
Instead, I sip my beer and take in a long breath of salty ocean air.
It’s nice. Nicer than I realized, to get out of the city, where I don’t feel the constant need to check email, to answer my phone, to straighten my tie, to be quick with a joke.
It’s even a relief to have a break from the numbers. That’s the thing with this damn calculator brain of mine. If numbers are there, I process them, even when I don’t need to. Everything from the stock ticker on every TV in Wall Street down to the receipt at a restaurant sets the numbers part of my brain humming.
Much in the way I imagine writers always have a little part of their attention tapped into their next story, a little part of me seems to be sorting and re-sorting numbers, just because they’re there.
But they’re not here now. There’s nothing but afternoon sunshine, a brisk breeze, sand, water . . . a beautiful woman.
My woman.
It’s past time I do something about that.
Hell if I know what. Or how.
I go back into the kitchen and open the fridge, this time to survey the food situation. Not only did The Sams have a whole arsenal of gourmet groceries delivered by some fancy white-glove service, they’d been planning on a party of six for the entire weekend.
The food options are endless. My cooking skills? Not so much.
I pull out a couple of varieties of expensive cheese and an enormous New York strip steak. This I can handle. Probably. I also find a couple of baking potatoes and crackers from the pantry and a serving dish to put the cheese on.
A few minutes later, I’ve got a decent-looking cheese plate happening, potatoes in the oven, and red wine decanting on the counter. My steak-seasoning skills are limited to salt and pepper, but gauging from the price tag on the steak, I don’t think it’ll matter so long as I don’t burn the hell out of it.
I’ve just turned on the grill on the back porch when I hear Juno’s bark, followed by the dog’s awkward scampering up the stairs. A moment later, Sabrina appears.
She freezes when she sees me, and I freeze, too, not in surprise, but because of how beautiful she looks. The wind and sea air have made her hair wilder and wavier than usual, and her cheeks are flushed pink, not from any expensive compact but from the wind, and because I know her . . . probably from a little anger. At me.
Her gaze flits from my face to the grill lid that’s still open, then down at the dog, who must have some sort of sixth sense that meat is on the horizon because she’s panting happily, her tail wagging like crazy.
I clear my throat. “Figured it was a waste to go back tonight. After we drove all the way here.”
She leans against one of the pillars of the porch, crossing her arms. “It’s a big house to have all to ourselves.”