“I think you like to ruffle his feathers. You enjoy rebelling. If I was a therapist, I might say you’re stuck in an arrested adolescence.”
He battled a smile and
poured wine into her glass. “Not a bad place to be stuck.”
Delicate fingers twirled the stem of the glass. “I’ll bet you broke every rule growing up.”
And she hadn’t, judging by her tone. “I bent a few,” he admitted.
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Half the time in Manhattan, the other half in Los Angeles.”
She bit into a scallop as she considered the information. “Are your parents divorced?”
“Bite your tongue. The St. Sebastian fortune holds marriages together, long after the normal glues like love and affection dissipate. It also makes separate households feasible. My father lives in New York, to be close to the company headquarters. The business is one of the few things he’s faithful to, and he’s an unapologetic workaholic. Mom prefers the sunshine and pool boys of Los Angeles. The arrangements made my younger sister’s birth a near miracle.”
As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Normally he danced around questions about his family, but tonight, in the face of her curiosity—and maybe the tiresome discussion with his father—he’d dumped a cynical load of dirty laundry on her. Now sympathy swam in her eyes. Totally misplaced, completely unwarranted sympathy.
“That must have been disruptive, always bouncing between coasts.”
He shrugged off her concern. “I got used to it. Don’t paint me as a poor little rich boy. I promise you, I worked benign parental neglect to my full advantage.”
She smiled at that, but her eyes stayed serious. “Fair enough, but didn’t you ever wish for something a little more traditional?”
“Depends on how you define traditional. My father grew up the product of exactly the kind of distant marriage he ended up having, so I guess you could say living separate lives represents the norm for St. Sebastians. Happily ever after continues to elude, but one way or another, they uphold the ’til death do they part.” More cynicism on parade. What the hell had gotten into him?
She’s gotten into you.
Chelsea put her fork down and gave him her undivided attention. “What about you? Don’t you hold out any hope for happily ever after?”
The setting sun turned her skin pink and gold. The breeze sent tendrils of hair dancing around her face. She stared at him with big, soft, hopeful eyes and there, in that moment, some long-lost part of him wanted to shove cynicism aside and drink the Kool-Aid.
You know better.
He did. He had to crush the hope, as applied to him, before either of them got carried away. “Happily ever after just isn’t in the cards for some people.”
“You don’t see yourself falling in love someday, getting married, and—”
“I don’t.” He paused a moment and stared at the shimmering water, waiting for his pulse to settle. You can’t even talk about it without triggering a flight instinct. Fingers of tension dug into the base of his skull. He rolled his shoulders. “Despite my all play and no work reputation, I work a lot. I travel constantly, and I like it that way. Relationships don’t work for me. I’m not cut out for them.”
Chelsea took a sip of wine, and carefully placed her glass on the table before looking at him. The sympathy was back in full force. “Maybe you haven’t met the right girl yet?”
“Maybe I’m not the right guy.” He bit into a scallop to try and cover the terseness of his response. Tonight this particular subject worked a nerve. He was happy, damn it. He led his personal life exactly as he wished, and his professional goals were nearly within his grasp. Things in his world couldn’t be more on-target. Why the discussion, and the way she was looking at him, left him edgy and dissatisfied made no sense. He swallowed, barely appreciating the perfectly seared scallop, and prepared to turn the conversation to an infinitely more interesting topic, like whether she preferred he deliver her next orgasm with his hands or his mouth. His dick was sadly out of the question because after the way they’d gone at each other earlier, it was a miracle she could walk straight. Still, possibilities abounded. Before he could commence an in-depth discussion of them, she broke the brief silence.
“Are you and your sister close?”
Abrupt mental gear shift. He went along with the direction she chose since his sister seemed like a safe topic. “We are.” His mouth stretched into the familiar, slightly exasperated grin Arden always provoked. “She’s six years younger, and a complete bohemian, but I do my best to keep her out of trouble.”
“She lives in New York?”
“She’s nomadic. Overseeing the interior decor and guest room amenities for St. Sebastian keeps her on the move, but a couple years ago, she bought a beach house in Twilight Cove. I own the house next door.”
Chelsea’s eyebrows rose. “The Twilight Cove located south of Montenido?”
He nodded. “Las Ventanas hit my radar shortly after I bought the property.”
Her eyes took on a faraway look and he thought she might pursue the subject of Las Ventanas, but she skipped around the mention of the resort and focused on the other information. “So you and your sister are neighbors. Sounds cozy.” She tipped her head to the side and brushed a wayward curl away from her neck. A quick vision flashed in his mind. Him, undoing her hair, wrapping it around his fist and pulling her head back so he could stare into those faraway eyes as they went blind with pleasure. The image held so much appeal it took him a moment to realize she was speaking.