17

tabby

 

I didn’t want to say that I was avoiding Sebastian. To avoid him would’ve been immature and pathetic.

But I was avoiding Sebastian.

He woke up before me, much to my surprise, so I waited on the other side of my door until he went downstairs, before I stealthily tiptoed toward the bathroom door. Quietly closing it behind me before taking a quick shower and hurrying back to my room.

Roman called while I was curling my hair.

“Ms. Clarke,” he greeted me, with the sound of a smile framing his voice.

“Hello, Mr. Dolecki,” I replied in the same friendly, albeit professional, tone. “How are you this morning?”

“Excellent. Looking forward to our meeting. I realize we probably should have arranged these details earlier in the week, but would you like me to send a car to pick you up?”

“No, that’s all right.” I wrapped a section of my hair around the heated wand. “I prefer to drive myself.”

“A woman in control,” he mused with a throaty chuckle. “Does noon still work for you?”

“Yes,” I nodded to myself in the mirror, releasing the now-tight curl and lifting another section of hair. “That works perfectly.”

“I hope you bring your appetite. Antonio’s is my favorite spot in the whole city.”

“I looked at their menu last night,” I fibbed. I was making out last night. I cringed. “They look delicious.”

“They are,” he agreed politely.

We finalized the details—he would get us a table, I would meet him at the restaurant—before hanging up just as I finished my curls. With a gentle raking of a brush through my auburn hair, I loosened the strands to emphasized waves, pinned two front sections back, and froze it all in place with a shot of hairspray.

Turning to grab my clothes from their garment bag laying on the bed, a heavy knock came at the door and my guts tied into knots.

“Who is it?” I called in some effort to keep my voice light and without anxiety.

“I’ll give you one guess,” Sebastian spoke through the door, and to still a whimper I wasn’t proud of, I clapped my hands over my face. “You don’t have to open the door. I just wanted to tell you there’s food downstairs if you’re hungry.”

Shaking my head against my palms, I replied, “Nope. Not hungry.”

“Oh. Well. I kinda made a shitload of food, so …” The gentle tapping of fingers against the door echoed into the room. Go away, go away, please go away. “It’s fine. You don’t have to—”

“I’ll grab something before I leave,” I fibbed. This was becoming a habit.

Pushing myself through the motions of getting ready, I unzipped the garment bag and listened for the sound of his footsteps walking away. But I never heard them. I began to wonder, as I pulled out the pencil skirt and frilly top, if he had instead levitated down the stairs. When my curiosity had gotten the better of me, I walked to the door and swung it open. I wasn’t surprised to find him still standing there, his back pressed to his door across the hall.

“Oh, hey,” Sebastian said with a casual grin, but there was no hiding the concern in his eyes. “I figured you’d have to leave eventually. Didn’t think it’d be in a towel, though.”

He gestured to the fluffy, dark blue towel wrapped around my body, the end came to just my middle thigh.

“I was just about to get dressed,” I explained, wishing I had brought my robe and putting on my most effective irritated face. “Why are you waiting outside my room?”

“Because we should talk,” he stated plainly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No, we really shouldn’t.” I made a move to close the door, when he stepped forward and shot his hand out to press against it. With an impatient sigh, I shook my head. “Sebastian, I have to get ready for work, okay? I need to go.”

“You kissed me,” he reminded me, ignoring my protests, “and whatever you want that to mean is totally fine with me. I don’t read into shit like that. If all you want is to make out with me on occasion, or if you never wanna touch me again—it’s all cool with me. But I want to know why you’re now avoiding me.”

He was an infuriating mass of man, blocking me from closing the door to my room and stopping me from getting ready to leave for work. The audacity of this display of immaturity was proof enough as to why kissing him was a very bad idea. He was a man-child without any sense of responsibility.

“Why?” I snapped, pinching the towel to keep it from falling, and he nodded. “Because what happened never should have happened at all, that’s why.”

Sebastian’s lips quirked with amusement, correlating with the crinkles at his eyes. “So, you think that avoiding me is going to make me forget that your tongue was in my mouth. I gotcha.”  

“That’s not what I said,” I disputed, shaking my head and pinching my eyes shut. Words quickly filled my mouth and I spat them out before thinking. “I never should have kissed you. I was caught in a moment of weakness, not to mention the fact that I’d had a glass of whiskey, and then acted on it. I’m having a difficult time processing it, because I know it was wrong, but I’m also afraid that if I look at you, I’ll create all of these reasons why it isn’t wrong.”

“I see.” I opened my eyes to find that his hand had left the door and his arms were now crossed over his chest. “Why can’t you just let it be what it is?”

“What do you mean?” I asked impatiently, ready to shut the door and be on my way.

“You said it yourself; it was a moment of weakness. You don’t have to complicate it by thinking about right or wrong or whatever else.”

“But it is wrong,” I felt the need to clarify.

“No,” Sebastian insisted with a blunt edge. “It’s not anything. Don’t label it. You could’ve just said to me, ‘Hey, shitface, I know I was dry-humping you last night but I never wanna do it again, okay?’ And I would’ve said, ‘Yeah, no problem,’ and that would’ve been it. But then, you went and made it something by avoiding me. No need to do that with me.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I was the one making it weird, and then all at once, I realized I’d been the reason it’d gotten weird in the first place. He hadn’t kissed me. He was flirty, yes, but he wasn’t the one shoving his tongue down my throat. Still, the fact remained, that I didn’t do this type of thing. I’d never done this type of thing, not like my sister.

“I didn’t realize that was an option,” I admitted, dropping my gaze.

“The hell, Tabby? You think, since you kissed me, it means we’re bound to some unspoken laws or something?”

“Well, I don’t exactly do this kind of thing, do I?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, but wasn’t that what it was? This was what he did, it’s what my sister did. Still, I shook my head, pressing my fingertips to my forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”

Sebastian chuckled. “Kissing me doesn’t automatically change who you are, contrary to popular belief,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, reading my thoughts.

My resolve to be a stony, unrelenting statue melted as one lithe finger curled under my chin to tip my head up and back. His eyelids fell to half-mast, grabbing a hold of the green in my eyes to melt into the brown of his, before bending to dust his lips over mine. So quick, I might not have registered that it happened at all, if it weren’t for the lightning strikes against my heart and the thundering of my pulse.

“See?” he whispered, his sweet maple syrup breath hot against my skin. “Still you.”

And just like that, he stood back and declared that I needed to get ready for my meeting, as though I hadn’t told him several times since opening the damn door. He walked away and down the stairs, casually calling to Greyson and asking if he wanted to jam later. Acting so nonchalant and as though he hadn’t refreshed a memory that’d only just begun to lose its vivid luster.

He was wrong, I realized, as my fingertips moved from my towel to my buzzing lips. I was different. Changed with a kiss. And I had no idea how I was going to get through that meeting.

 

***

 

“Jess, what can you tell me about Roman Dolecki?” I asked through the Bluetooth in my car. I had attempted some research the night before, to ensure I knew about the potential new client, but the problem was my brain. It wouldn’t focus on anything but the drummer across the hall.

“Uh, well, he’s secretive as fuck,” Jess snickered. “I couldn’t find many decent pictures of him, which is strange, given the stature of the projects he’s been involved in. A lot of big stuff; the rebranding of sports arenas, the brain behind a few up-and-coming social media outlets, and a business shareholder in a few restaurant chains. His name isn’t exactly well known, but he’s a pretty big deal apparently.”

“Interesting,” I muttered, letting loose an exhausted sigh.

Driving in New York City sucked. There’s a reason why so few people living there own cars. I was grateful that Sebastian lived just outside of Manhattan, in a small suburban town only a twenty minute drive from the city line. But right now, as I waited for a small sea of people to cross over Broadway, I wished he had gotten himself a loft within the city limits instead. Then I could’ve walked, or taken a cab and have been done with it, instead of spending over forty minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“He’s pretty accomplished for a guy of his age, too. He’s only forty-one,” Jess informed me. “So, you can take that bit of info for what it’s worth.”

“What am I going to do with that?” I guffawed. “’Oh, Roman, good for you for making something of yourself before your prime. Now, buy this house, for the love of God.’”

“Well, I mean, I wouldn’t say it in those words, but … complimenting people helps,” she offered.

“I’ll see where the conversation takes us,” I gritted as I hit the horn, beeping at a cab that insisted on cutting me off. “God, I should’ve agreed to letting him send a car.”

“Yeah, probably,” Jess agreed. “Oh, and before I forget, you’re not doing any more work tonight, right? I mean, we gave you a pass with the meeting because it made sense, but you did agree to the weekend off.”

“Yes, Jess,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “I know. I’m going straight to Sebastian’s house after this, to eat some ice cream and watch some crappy TV.”

“Good,” she replied happily. “And speaking of Thor, how was his house last night?”

“Uh …” All brain function stopped as I zeroed in on that one memory. The taste of his tongue. The feel of his hair between my fingers. “G-good.”

“G-good?” she mocked around a bubbly laugh. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means it was good.” I bit my lip, nearing the restaurant. “He cooked dinner and it was really nice. I had a drink, and—”

“A drink? What did you drink?”

You know you don’t have a reputation for indulging in alcohol when your friends gasp and immediately ask what you had. “Whiskey.”

“You can’t handle whiskey,” Jess speculated. I could practically hear the gears in her brain turning. “You had a drink with Thor?”

“Can you please stop calling him that, for crying out loud? It’s ridiculous. And I’m almost th—”

She gasped. “Did you guys do it?”

“Oh, gee, Jess. How mature. Did we do it … you know, we are adults. We’re not kids in high school or something. You can just say—”

“You’re rambling. Why are you rambling?” Her voice was full of mischief. Like she knew something I didn’t.

So I decided to indulge as I pulled into a parking garage. “Because I kissed him last night, okay? I kissed him, and then I made things weird by avoiding him this morning. Then, he made things even weirder by kissing me again to prove a point or something, and—”

“Whoa! Wait a minute! You kissed him? Tabitha Clarke, I’m impressed!” Jess was downright giddy and I could hear Alex squealing in the background. “I’m putting you on speaker. Alex wants in.”

Why did I say anything? “I don’t have time for this, guys,” I grumbled, parking the car and unplugging the phone. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Honey, don’t you dare,” Alex responded. “You will tell me if that man kisses as good as he looks, and you will—”

I hurried through the parking garage to the street as I groaned. “It was a moment of weakness. I was drunk,” I lied, “and it’s never happening again. Forget I said anything. Now, I’m hanging up. I’m at the restaurant. I’ll tell you later how it goes with Roman.”

I hung up before they could respond and walked down the sidewalk to the quaint Italian restaurant. With a deep, cleansing breath, I forced all thought of Sebastian and his lips from my mind and focused entirely on the job at hand: finding a buyer for Mrs. Worthington’s house. I walked through the door, taken immediately by the scent of freshly baked garlic bread and the sound of traditional music.

“Table for one?” the hostess asked with a beaming smile, and I shook my head.

“I’m meeting Roman Dolecki,” I informed her, clutching my briefcase to my side.

“Ah, yes, of course. Please, right this way.” I followed her into the dining room and to a table in the far corner. “Mr. Dolecki, your guest has arrived.”

A man of about six-feet in height stood, smoothing down his silk tie over a crisp button-down shirt. Dark, nearly-black hair shone under the warm glow of overhead lights, and at the sight of me, his deep-brown eyes glinted with delight. A smile stretched his lips, encased by a blanket of stubble, as dark as the hair on his head.

“Ms. Clarke,” he bowed his head to me before extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Mr. Dolecki,” I greeted him with a warm smile, sliding my palm against his. It was smooth and warm. Not the hands of a worker. Or a drummer.

“Please, Ms. Clarke; call me Roman.” His voice was velvet and every word was gilded in gold.

“Okay, Roman,” I replied, pulling my hand from his. “And you may call me Tabitha.”

“All right then,” he smiled, gesturing toward my chair. “Tabitha.”

Not Tabby.