Juno barks in objection at being left out, but we both ignore her.
I slowly walk toward Sabrina. “I’m doing it for you, you know. As good as your professional skills are, your domestic persona’s a little rusty.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Is that so?”
“Don’t get me wrong, you do sushi restaurants and cocktail parties really well. And museum fund-raisers, and dinner parties, and dresses and heels.”
“Why do I get the sense I’m being insulted somehow?”
“Because it’s me,” I say, reaching out and capturing an errant curl, just because I can. “And because it’s you. And because over the years you’ve built up so many damn walls where I’m concerned, you won’t hear a damn thing I say without first filtering it for an insult.”
“Maybe that’s because that’s how you started out this whole thing.”
“Or maybe,” I say quietly, “it’s because even then you were primed to be suspicious.”
Her nostrils flare in irritation. “Just like a man, putting the blame on me. Poor you, wrongfully accused—”
“No, rightly accused,” I interrupt. “I don’t deny that I was an idiot. But maybe you got my motivations wrong.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I have walls, too. And back on that first night, I think I was terrified that, for the first time in my adult life, someone might scale them. That you might scale them.”
Her lips part in surprise, but for once, she has no sassy retort. Instead she studies me for a long moment. “If we stay, I’m not helping cook.”
“Well thank God for that,” I say, playing along with her need to lighten the mood.
Sabrina smiles, then reaches out and grabs the beer from my hand, taking a sip. Then she makes a face. “I hate beer.”
“Wine’s open in the kitchen.”
“Much better,” she says. “You fetch that while I take Juno around to the hose on the side of the house. Though I’m not sure wet dog will be that much better than sandy dog.”
She heads back down the steps, whistling for Juno to follow, and I allow myself a small smile. I know that I’ve just lost a prime opportunity to spend time wooing a richer-than-shit dream client.
But I’m not the least bit upset by it.
Because instead, I get an entire weekend to go about wooing my dream woman.
26
SABRINA
Friday Night, October 6
After the sun set, the weather went quickly from being “brisk and refreshing” to downright cold, but neither Matt nor I seemed to care. Instead we pulled on every layer we brought with us, helped ourselves to the stack of fleece blankets rolled neatly in a basket by the back door, and curled up on the enormous padded chaise longue overlooking the water.
Juno’s sprawled out at our feet, finally tired from her endless laps on the beach, and even with the zap of bugs against the porch light and the occasional rowdy laughter from a group of teens farther up the beach, the night’s the most peaceful I’ve experienced in a long time.
“More wine?” Matt asks, glancing down to where I have my wineglass propped up on his knee, my head on his shoulder.
“Nah, I’m good. You?”
“Saving room for dessert.”
I groan. “I can’t even think about having more food. That steak was enormous, and you put half a stick of butter on my potato.”
“It’s the only way to eat the things. That or fried.”
“Or mashed,” I point out.
“I never liked mashed potatoes,” he muses. “I think because they remind me of Thanksgiving.”
I lift my head to look at him. “You don’t like Thanksgiving?”
He grins. “You’ve met my parents. What do you think?”
“Tell me Felicia didn’t come over for holidays.”
“Not until I was in college. I guess they figured with me gone most of the time, there was no point in keeping up pretenses anymore. Not that they ever did a good job of that in the first place.”
“God, you poor kid,” I murmur.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“It was pretty bad,” I say with a laugh.
He looks at me, his eyes going serious. “Yours was worse.”
I suck in a quick breath. “You know, maybe I will grab some more wine.”
I start to stand, but he puts a hand on my leg, holding me still. “Sabrina.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you ever talk about your childhood, your life before New York?”
“Because it sucked. As you’ve already said, yours was bad; mine was worse. I don’t see the point in discussing things best left in the distant past. Ian’s the only thing from that part of my life that’s still around.”
He flinches. It’s slight, almost imperceptible, but enough to give me pause. Surely Matt’s not jealous of Ian. Is he?
“I didn’t mean to imply . . . I just . . . I didn’t even know you then.”
“I know. Which is why it sucks that I’m always on the outside, like I’m being punished for growing up in Connecticut instead of Philadelphia with you two.”
I touch his arm. “That’s not what this is about. This isn’t me trusting Ian more than you.”
“Okay,” he says quietly, and my chest clenches in panic. He’s giving up on me already. I should be relieved. Instead, I feel . . . lost.
“It’s fine, Sabrina.” Matt’s blue eyes soften as his touch moves from my knee to my cheek. “You don’t have to tell me.” The gentle tenderness in his voice is like a battering ram on the very walls he mentioned earlier in the evening.
My self-preservation’s stayed strong for years, but my need to keep everything compartmentalized into painful past and carefully restrained present seems to be wavering a little more with every passing day. First with Lara and Kate, now with him.
Especially with him.
Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s past time.
I take a breath for courage. “It’s not a pretty story.”
His eyes widen in surprise. Then he wordlessly hands me his whiskey, which is stronger than my wine. I smile and take a sip. I’m not above using liquid courage.
“It’s not a long story, either,” I say, handing him back his glass. “I mean, it’s not like some convoluted saga.”
“Damn, I love those. All guys do.”
I smile at his sarcasm, using it to buy some time as I pluck at a stray string on the blanket.
He stays silent, waiting for me. Letting me do it my way when I’m ready.
“So. You know I grew up in Philly. But it wasn’t like Liberty Bell, cheesesteak-sandwich-wars Philadelphia. We’re talking a neighborhood you’ve never heard of, or, if you have, it’s because of its crime rates.”
I pull harder on the string.
“My dad died when I was a baby. Heroin overdose. Though, from what I was able to piece together about him when I got older, I’m not sure he’d have been around if he’d lived. Sexual assault record, vehicular manslaughter . . . all sorts of nasty stuff.”
The tiny little string I’ve been fiddling with is now nearly a foot long, courtesy of my nerves. Matt puts his hand on mine, linking our fingers, and squeezes. Continue.
“It was just my mom and me for a while. Then later, my two half brothers lived with us. We alternated between crappy housing and crappy trailers. I’m not sure I ever lived in one place longer than a year. She liked her drugs a little bit, her booze a lot. But mostly?” I take a breath. “Mostly she liked her men. Or maybe the men liked her.”
“What’s she look like?”
It’s an easy question, and I suspect he means it to be. I squeeze his hand. “Like me. Brown eyes instead of blue, but otherwise I look just like her.”
What I don’t say out loud is that every time I glance in the mirror, I feel a tiny flash of fear that the similarities are inside as well as out. That I’m just as cold, opportunistic, and self-absorbed.
“So she was beautiful. What else?”
“You’re good at this,” I say begrudgingly.
“Only with you.” He brushes a strand of hair off my face.
My heart does something ridiculous, and I look away, knowing that the hard part is still to come.