Page 49 of Overnight Inheritance

That left Mae to stew in her own thoughts. She hadn’t seen Sebastian since the night at the hospital—the night his father had died. She’d composed hundreds of texts in her head since then, even started typing several of them, but had deleted them all. He’d made the decision to stay apart and she had to respect that, no matter how wrong it felt or how much she physically yearned to be near him.

Rosario was there waiting, and they had a quick, catch-up conversation as she showed them into the boardroom. She’d missed Rosario. Sebastian’s assistant had become a good friend, and she was sorry to lose that.

Once in the boardroom, Rosario took Mae to a place beside the head of the table that had a coffee waiting. “Grande Americano. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Mae laughed and hugged her, saying, “Perfectly right, thank you,” and took her seat. Heath, Freya, Sarah, and their lawyer all sat in a row beside her.

Within minutes, Sebastian entered, and her heart swooped and then clenched tight in her chest. He looked as commanding and in control as that first day in his office, and her body ached for all she’d lost. He was followed by a group of six women and men in suits, most she recognized from when she was shadowing Sebastian, but she couldn’t remember any names. Like the suits at the first meeting she’d attended in this room, they were all matching in their attire and their severe, slicked-back hair, and all looked smart, dispassionate, and focused.

Sebastian took the seat beside her, at the head of the oval table, and for a suspended moment, she was paralyzed with longing. His profile was heartbreakingly beautiful—how had she forgotten how beautiful it was? His woodsy cologne drifted over to surround her, teasing her senses, and his mouth moved to form words to the person on his other side, but she didn’t hear any of them. All she could do was drink him in. And try to stop her hand from reaching out to touch the fire that burned so brightly from within him that it warmed her from where she was sitting.

Then he swung around and caught her gaze, and for a moment so tiny, so brief that she almost missed it, his eyes filled with pained longing that matched her own, then disappeared as his features smoothed out.

“Mae,” he said, his voice as steady as a rock. Then looked beside her. “Heath. Thank you for coming. I know it was short notice.” His gaze traveled to the others in her group, and he greeted them one by one, and she was glad, because she wouldn’t have been able to get her voice to work—not without it giving away every foolish and messy thought inside her.

Sebastian shook out his wrists, bringing her attention to his strong, tan hands against the snowy white of his shirt cuffs, and leaned his forearms on the table as he took control of the meeting.

“I’m sure you’re all aware that my father threatened to disinherit me,” he said, and the room fell into deathly silence. “There’s a chance he would have followed through, but he died before he could, so we’ll never know.” He paused, swallowed, then continued. “All we can do is move forward, and that means I’ve inherited his half share in Bellavista Holdings. The other 50 percent, of course, is jointly owned by Mae and Heath.”

There was nodding around the table, and Sebastian made brief eye contact with everyone on her side. “Because of the way things were left with my father, I considered selling my share. Drawing a line under it. The company, and the rift between the descendants of the original owners, has caused too much pain over the generations.” He looked over at Sarah and they exchanged a nod of acknowledgment.

“Instead,” he said, straightening, “I’m bringing you a proposal today to turn this company and its capital into a force for good.

“Someone asked me a question recently, a question that was so sensible, so obvious, that it’s replayed in my mind ever since. It was this—do you ever think about the world you’re leaving for Alfie and want to do something good?”

Mae bit back a gasp, peeking around to see if anyone had realized it was her question, but they were all transfixed by Sebastian. Her pulse thudded in her ears as she turned back to him, desperate to know where he was taking this.

“The answer I found is that I want Alfie to grow up in a better world. Also, after just losing my father, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching about the sort of father I want to be. I want Alfie to grow up with a dad who sees the world the way good people see it.” He glanced down at her, his mouth quirking at the corners. “The way Mae Dunstan sees it.”

He held her gaze and she couldn’t look away. The air was completely sucked from the room, and she couldn’t draw breath, and the terrible truth was that she didn’t care. As long as Sebastian was looking at her, as long as she was looking at him, within touching distance, nothing else mattered.

Heath cleared his throat. “So what’s your proposal?”

Mae tore her gaze away and looked down at her hands crossed on the notepad.

“I want to change the company’s vision statement to center on projects that improve quality of life in tangible ways. The perfect example of this new model would be purchasing Laurence Sheridan’s property, which sits in a neighborhood that needs more communal spaces, and building a multilevel playground for the local children.”

He drew something from his pocket, and the screen behind him flared to life, showing drawings of an amazing playground, with slides and swings, but also, a four-story wooden fort, with rope netting instead of walls, and interior stairs, climbing poles, and slides. Beside the fort was a metal climbing pyramid that was at least half as high, with a spiderweb of rope in all directions to make paths for a child’s ascent. “These are initial ideas, and the plan is for the designers and architects to work with local children on the final design before commencing work.”

“Good God,” Freya whispered from the other side of Heath.

“In Mae’s original idea, the plot would also have a community center. Our planner—” he nodded to a woman at the far end of the table “—suggested using the entire plot for the playground to maximize the opportunity, and buy a separate space for the Evelyne O’Donohue Community Center.” Another slide flashed up behind him with a drawing of a welcoming building that had her mother’s name emblazoned across the front, and she heard Heath’s breath catch.

She looked from the screen to Sebastian and back again. He was still talking, and she tried to take it all in, her eyes swimming with the tears she was trying to blink back.

“Of course,” he said, flicking the slide to one with graphs and numbers, “this is one idea, an example of the type of project the company would take on. To carry this out, we might take a commission from a charitable trust, or we might take it on as a pro bono case.”

One of the suits took over and started explaining financial specifics, and Freya asked a couple of money-related questions, but Mae wasn’t listening to any of it. Sebastian had turned everything around because of something she’d said? Her entire body trembled with the enormity of it.

She scribbled a note on the paper in front of her and slid it to him.

Did you call me sensible?

He subtly took the paper without looking away from the discussion in front of him. After a few seconds, he glanced down, saw her note, and scrawled something with his strong left hand beside it, and passed it back to her.

Very sensible. You’re starting to blend in with all those suits on the other side of the table.

She smothered a grin and wrote her reply in big letters across the bottom of the page.

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