Page 46 of First Comes Marriage

“Give me five minutes,” she said, gently pulling her hand away and slipping past him to get to her bedroom.

“I’ll give you ten,” he said, turning to face her. His tone was joking but his eyes held hers with such weight she felt it drop into her belly, like a stone sinking into the ocean, cushioned only by the faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the quirk of his lips.

You will not kiss him again. You will not let yourself hope for more with this man who has already told you he doesn’t want that.

She slipped inside the bedroom, pausing before she closed the door. “Thank you, Sebastian. Not just for the rings, but for coming with me this weekend. For…for all of it.”

He nodded, a barely perceptible dip of his chin, and held her gaze as she closed the door. She pressed her forehead to the door, forcing air into her lungs, willing those tendrils wrapped around her heart to loosen enough to ease the ache settling into her chest.

You will not fall for your husband.

***

The two-story, red brick home of Maryann and Richard Page sat at the top of a winding, tree-lined driveway, the paving stones meandering across the lush, green lawn untilthey came to a stop at the front entrance of the sprawling home. In the golden light of the late summer early evening, the house seemed to glow, as though the Pages had arranged for spotlights to highlight the most imposing angles of the gabled roof, to draw attention to the ivy and wisteria climbing one side of the structure. Baz wouldn’t have been surprised if they had.

Baz had only been inside the monstrosity of a home once, on the evening of his and Holly’s engagement party, when Maryann and Richard had gathered together all of their wealthiest friends to celebrate their daughter’s impending marriage. He hadn’t needed to stand on the gleaming hardwood floors in rooms decorated as though white were an entire color palette unto itself to know he didn’t belong.

But that was before.

A lot had changed in the intervening years. His suit was no longer too large, hanging from the slight shoulders of a man who lost himself so thoroughly in his work that he forgot to stop for meals. Instead, he’d had this suit custom tailored to highlight the new breadth of his frame, the taut musculature he’d cultivated as carefully as he’d cultivated his new wardrobe. His shoes weren’t damp from where the rainwater had slipped through a worn patch on the sole, but shined from their latest polishing, the leather supple and a perfect match for his belt.

And now you’re here with the other sister.

Baz parked his car beneath the linden tree at the top of the driveway and waited. Sabrina had hardly said a word as they’d approached her family home, her spine stiffening, shoulders pulling back into the posture of a woman who had been frequently scolded for slouching. Her fingers closed around the new rings on her left hand, twisting the metal bands around and around, as her eyes fixed on the light spilling from the front windows of the house.

“How did we meet?” she asked, a strain in her voice that Baz didn’t recognize.

He fumbled for an answer to her question, not sure how to say,You knocked over a rack of donated produce at the food pantry and we spent the better part of the afternoon trying to sort twenty types of squash into their correct bins again—don’t you remember?

“I mean,” she said, turning to face him, her back still perfectly straight, “how did we reconnect? They’ll want to know how this happened.” She gestured between them, then returned to twisting her rings.

“We could say your aunt—”

She shook her head firmly. “Aunt Lucy would have told my mom. Have you ever been to Maine?”

“Maine?”

“Kennebunkport, yes. Have you ever been there?”

“Maybe?”

“We could say we ran into each other when I was still living there. You were visiting friends, or on vacation. Six months ago, maybe? Does that seem long enough for us to have...for it to become...for—”

“For us to fall in love?” She gave a wide-eyed nod, the speed of her ring turning increasing. He knocked her hand away and laced his fingers through hers, suddenly overcome with the urge to touch her, to settle the constant hum of anxiety that seemed to surround her since they’d cross the state line. “I ran into you in a bar.”

“Coffee shop,” she corrected.

His lip twitched with the urge to smile. “A coffee shop, then. We exchanged numbers.”

“We stayed in touch,” she said, her gaze locked on the glide of his thumb back and forth over the back of her hand. “The occasional phone call turned weekly. Then daily. We stayed up talking until all hours of the night. Since neither of us could sleep anyway.”

His gut twisted with longing for those late-night phone callsthey’d never have, for the hours of making her laugh, listening to her ramble. For falling asleep with the phone pressed to his ear. For the easy courtship, the morphing of friends to something more. For the inevitability of it, the security of it.

He’d never considered himself a romantic, but he could picture it, how it would be to fall for Sabrina. It would be as easy as breathing, a slow slide into a warm pool and, before he could realize he didn’t know how to swim, he’d already be floating. He could imagine how it would feel to spend his day waiting to crawl into bed so he could hear her voice. It wouldn’t be all that different from the way it felt now to crawl into bed and hold his breath so he could hear each shift of her skin beneath the sheets on the other side of the guest room wall.

When was the last time he’dwantedthe way Sabrina made him want?

Careful...

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