by JoAnn Ross
The damn cuckoo clock struck the hour, the strident bird coming out of its wooden house to shatter an expectant silence that was growing more and more dangerous by the moment.
“You’d better be getting back to the brain factory.”
“Yes.” Sebastian’s own tone was as reluctant as hers.
“Why don’t you take the Jeep? I won’t be going out.” Since she still hadn’t been able to locate any of his belongings, Nate had loaned him one of the lab snowmobiles. But the forecast was for more snow and she still worried about him.
“Thank you.” He nodded. “You’re very generous.”
“I’ve been told that’s my problem.”
He gave her another of his long, thoughtful looks. “Perhaps,” he agreed finally. “But it’s also one of your more endearing charms.”
He caught her chin in his fingers and kissed her, a quick, nonthreatening brush of lips that still possessed the power to weaken her knees. Appearing equally shaken, Sebastian dropped his hands to his sides and stepped back.
“Static electricity,” Kirby managed to suggest through lips that burned from his touch. “The rug has a nylon backing.”
“That’s undoubtedly it,” Sebastian agreed. “Nate will be wondering what happened to me.”
“If my brother is working, an earthquake could happen right beneath his desk and unless his beloved computer fell into it, he wouldn’t even notice,” Kirby said dryly.
Sebastian smiled. “Rosalyn has been known to say much the same thing about me.”
“Rosalyn’s your sister,” Kirby remembered. “The something-anthropologist.”
“Xenoanthropologist.”
“That’s right. I’d like to meet her. It sounds as if we have a lot in common.”
“And have the two of you discussing me like a frozen slide under a microscope? I know you, Kirby Pendleton. Within five minutes of meeting Rosalyn, you would have her revealing all my secrets.”
“Do you have all that many secrets, Sebastian?” Kirby asked. It was not a casual question.
Sebastian Blackthorne was not an easy man to know.
He would definitely not be an easy man to love.
“Enough,” Sebastian said. “But there’s no time to discuss them because I must leave.”
“Sure.” Damn. The walls between them had gone up again. Kirby shrugged with feigned nonchalance as she handed him the Jeep keys. “I wouldn’t want to keep you and my brother from earning the Nobel Prize… Drive carefully.”
“I will do my best not to crash your Jeep.”
“The Rum Runner Island Council that paid for it would appreciate that,” Kirby said. “Perhaps, if you finish up at a reasonable hour,” she suggested, “we could have a late supper.”
“I’d like that. But I don’t want you to go to the trouble of cooking on my account.”
She laughed. “I have no intention of putting your life at risk. I thought I might heat up a frozen pizza. And maybe I’ll wait to watch tonight’s movie. Christmas in Connecticut is a fun 1940s movie about this writer who pretends to have this perfect life and gets herself in trouble when her boss insists she cook a perfect holiday meal at the farm she doesn’t really have, for him and a returning war hero. Needless to say, chaos ensues, but eventually love wins out in the end.”
“Love seems to be a running theme,” he observed. “As if holiday films exist as much to present an affirmation of courtship as they celebrate the season.”
Despite being less than pleased that his work was taking him away again, Kirby couldn’t resist smiling at the way the man always had to find a reason for everything. Including Christmas movies. In many ways, Sebastian was a great deal like her brother—startlingly brilliant, impossibly driven, yet, at the same time, possessing a warm and caring heart.
“Can’t have one without a happily-ever-after,” she agreed.
He bent his head and brushed his lips lightly, briefly against her smiling ones again.
Then left the house.
As she watched the Jeep disappear in the snow, as she reminded herself that not only had he not promised her a future—on the contrary, he’d been quite specific about his inability to offer her any type of long-term commitment—her unruly heart seemed determined to overrule her cautious head.
Her feelings for him had become hopelessly tangled, frustratingly complicated.
But whenever she’d try to sort them out, the bottom line was always the same. Despite every vestige of Yankee common sense she possessed, she was falling deeper in love with Sebastian Blackthorne with each passing day.
* * *
“What are you doing tonight?” Kirby asked the next morning as they drank their coffee and read the weekly Rum Runner Island Yankee Observer at the kitchen table. Although it was available online, Sebastian found sharing the old-fashioned print copy pleasantly domestic. Almost as if they were an actual couple. This week’s edition was mostly local gossip, along with high school and New England Patriots’ sports scores. It also had reported on the UFO sightings.
“I’m running a new program.” He refrained from telling her that he and Nate had come up with a hypothesis regarding his trip home. A trip, that, if Nate’s projections were correct, would be three short days away. “Why?”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, locked away for all those hours in the brain factory, but Winterfest is tonight.”
“To celebrate the solstice. I believe Whitney mentioned something about that,” Sebastian murmured obliquely as he got up to refill his mug. He opted against mentioning that the geneticist had invited him to accompany her to the annual festivities.
“I’ll just bet she did.”
Sebastian put the mug down and framed her frowning face between his palms. Her hair, backlit by the fire, resembled a coppery halo. “I should have asked you to attend the festival with me.”
She looked out the window at the chattering birds who were noisily demanding their breakfast. “Don’t do me any favors.”
“It is you who will be doing me a favor, Kirby. I’ve never experienced a Winterfest.” Until he’d arrived on Rum Runner Island, he’d never experienced snow or ice. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than attend with you.”
“You don’t have to work late?”
“Work can wait.” Sebastian could not believe he had actually said that. “I’d rather be with you.”
Kirby smiled. “If we leave here by six, we’ll be at the square in time for dinner. You haven’t tasted anything until you’ve tasted a genuine Maine lobster. And not one already cooked into macaroni, but on a table with butcher paper and a hammer.”
“A hammer?”
“Trust me. You’ll love it.”
He’d trust her with his life. Which, indeed, he already had. “Six it is.”
19
It appeared that everyone on the island had turned out for Winterfest.
Mother Nature had cooperated by bestowing a cold, clear night for the festivities. The black-velvet sky was spangled with glittering stars. The trees on Old Town Road had been sprayed with water that had frozen to a crystalline brilliance. In addition, fairy lights had been strung through the bare branches, while a towering white ice castle claiming the town square had, like the trees, been draped in tiny white lights.
“Oh!” Kirby stood, transfixed as she looked up at the tall turrets. “The guys the island council hired from Augusta to build this have had the entire square hidden behind a high fence. Even my badge wouldn’t get me in to see it. But the wait was worth it. It’s just like the Emerald City.”
“Emeralds are green. This castle is white.”
“Don’t be so literal.” She slapped his arm with a mittened hand. “The Emerald City is from the Wizard of Oz. Which I’m guessing is another movie you don’t remember seeing.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Well, we’ll just have to download it. For the New Year.”
Sebastian’s heart froze as cold as the icy trees. H
e hadn’t told her he wouldn’t be here by the New Year. But by keeping silent, he’d committed a lie of omission. During his short time on Earth, he’d grown less and less able to remain true to the code of conduct that had been drilled into him all his life.
“Emily!” Distracted by someone across the square, Kirby didn’t appear to notice his lack of response. “Come over here!”
The woman, whose dark hair skimmed the shoulders of her snowy-white coat, waved back and headed toward them. The man who’d been standing next to her came with her.
The two sisters hugged, then the other woman stood back and treated Sebastian to a long, deep look. “You’d be the mysterious Sebastian Blackthorne,” she said.
“I don’t know about being mysterious, but you’re correct about the name. And you’d be Emily Pendleton. The Martha Stewart of Maine.”
Her lips quirked at that. And her hazel eyes that were an intriguing swirl of gold, green, and brown warmed. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Your lobster mac and cheese was the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” he said with absolute sincerity.
Apparently those were the magic words that seemed to win her over. “I like this one,” she told Kirby.
“I like him, too,” Kirby said, dimpling prettily as she slipped her arm through his. Then she turned her attention toward the man standing next to Emily. “Hello.”
“Hi.” He held out a hand toward Kirby, which was yet more proof that Sebastian’s sister knew her cultures. “I’m Noah Brewster. From Bangor. I was here inspecting the inn’s attic, and Emily talked me into checking out your festival.” After he’d shaken both their hands, he looked down at Kirby’s pretty brunette sister. “Not that it took all that much convincing.”
The vibes that Sebastian had found missing between Nate and Whitney were sparking like a downed electrical wire between the couple. He exchanged a glance with Kirby and saw that she’d noticed it, too.
“It’s good to meet you,” she said. “Emily was telling me all about her plans to turn the chaos of our family home’s attic into a romantic bridal suite.”
“She has a very strong vision in mind,” he said.
Kirby laughed. “I’ll just bet she does.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and held it out to her sister. “Would you take a picture of us together? For my scrapbook?”
“I’ve never been able to get you into scrapping,” her sister pointed out.
“Maybe that’s because I’ve never had any photos that I wanted to keep,” Kirby countered. When she smiled up at him, Sebastian waited for the bolt of lightning to come from the sky and turn him to cinders.
What he was about to do was unconscionable.
He’d realized, while driving through the snowy woods tonight, that he no longer cared about proving his theory right to a bunch of stuffy, closed-minded scientists. When compared to what he felt for Kirby, vindication and fame were no more than one of those lacey snowflakes that landed on his sleeve and instantly melted.
But neither could he leave his sister when she could be in the most danger of her life. Her continual bucking of the system that had kept their planet peaceful so long, and had allowed it to prosper so well, would undoubtedly get her in serious trouble. Even deported.
And she wouldn’t be the only one. If Rosalyn acted as she’d told him she planned to, with their father no longer alive to protect their mother, the two of them could be arrested as co-conspirators.
Which meant that he had no choice but to return home.
He strongly doubted Kirby would want to remember him after he’d deserted her, especially during what was obviously her favorite season of the year. But because it would have been rude and caused questions if he’d refused, he posed with her in front of the ice castle, his arm around her shoulder, while she cuddled close, as if they were any happy, carefree, ordinary couple on a holiday Winterfest date.
He smiled on command, but he knew it had been as stiff as he’d felt when Emily looked down at the screen, frowned, and said, “Let’s try that one more time.”
“I probably blinked,” Kirby said. “I’ve never been very photogenic.”
Because that idea was so ridiculous, given the images of her that he knew would be forever emblazoned in his mind, Sebastian actually laughed.
“Perfect!” Emily declared.
“Thank heavens,” Kirby said beneath her breath. “She would’ve have kept us here all night until we managed perfection.”
Knowing he was making the ultimate situation even worse, he couldn’t resist bending down and brushing a kiss against her cheek. “You’re perfect just as you are.”
She turned her head so their lips were a whisper apart. Color that he knew had nothing to do with the icy air had turned her cheeks a deep rose. “You’re prejudiced.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t stop it from being true.” And then, because he couldn’t resist, could never resist, he touched his lips to hers. And heard the click of the phone’s shutter.
“Whew. You two had better come with us and get some lobstah,” Emily said, exaggeratedly dropping the r as less and less islanders seemed to be doing since the days Kirby and her brother and sisters were growing up. “Before you melt the castle the council spent half the island’s holiday budget on.”
“It was worth it,” Kirby said, slipping her mittened hand into his.
“Absolutely,” he agreed. As delicious as he’d already discovered Maine’s famous lobster to be, Sebastian knew the taste would never surpass the flavor of her lips.
“Would you stop looking at me like that?” she complained lightly. “We’re becoming the center of attention. In another minute, everyone in town will have us headed down the aisle.”
As dangerous as it was to even let his mind go there, Sebastian found that idea eminently appealing.
“Lobstah it is,” he called out to Emily, echoing her local accent. “Lead the way.”
They’d nearly reached the tent when Sebastian saw Nate and Whitney approaching. They were not alone.
“I’m surprised Fred Simpson is with them,” he murmured.
“He seems to be dressed for an expedition to the North Pole,” she commented, taking in the layering of a knit cap, blue furry earmuffs, and hoodie. His black down parka looked as if he’d stuffed a pillow beneath it, and his jeans, which came to the top of his logger boots, were so bulky they had to be fleece-lined. “I don’t remember ever meeting him.”
“Nate told me he’s not very sociable,” Sebastian responded as he waved back to Nate. “From the little I’ve seen of him, I’d say that’s an understatement. But apparently he’s attracted to Whitney.”
“Of course he is.”
“Well, hello,” the woman in question greeted them. “Isn’t this just the quaintest little festival? It’s like going back in time.”
“Maybe you’ll run into Emily Brontë.” Kirby’s tone was tinged with snark. Sebastian had been on the receiving end of the newly learned colloquialism from his sister enough times to recognize it.
“And wouldn’t that be fun?” Whitney said with a blindly bright, obviously fake smile. Once again her eyes glittered like frost.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Sebastian said to Nate. After insisting Sebastian take Kirby to the festival, her brother had opted to stay behind to double-check some algorithms.
“I finished up early, and since Whitney and Fred were just leaving, I decided to come along. A lot of people get tired of lobster, being that it’s so available here, but I never pass up a chance.”
“I don’t understand the appeal they have for you New Englanders,” Whitney said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “They always remind me of giant insects. Not to mention the fact that they’re basically a butter delivery system. I’ll be able to hear your arteries clogging while you eat.”
“Maybe Fred will loan you his earmuffs,” Nate said cheerfully.
“I’d be happy to,” Fred, who’d remained silent until now, spoke up. His words c
ame out on little ghosts of breath that steamed up his horn-rimmed glasses.
“Thank you, Fred. That’s very sweet of you.” She patted his chapped cheek. “But I’m fine.”
“You’re better than fine,” he said on what appeared to be a rush of pent-up emotion. “You remind me of Veronica. In the Archie comics,” he supplied when her brow furrowed.
“Oh, of course. What fun,” she repeated, then aimed a look at Kirby. “And Kirby can be Betty.”
Sebastian had no idea what or who they were talking about, but he could recognize an insult when he heard one. He put his arm around Kirby’s waist and smiled down at her. “Betty has always been my favorite,” he said.
Whitney gave him another of those searching looks he’d grown used to receiving from her. “Well, you two have fun.” She took hold of Nate’s arm and began practically dragging him away. “I want to look at the castle.”
“Thank you,” Kirby said, as the threesome walked off.
“Thanks are not necessary. I know you can protect yourself, but I enjoy standing up for you. Who is Betty?”
“A character in a comic book series. She and Veronica both love Archie. She’s the good girl and Veronica is the bad girl.”
“Well, then,” he said, “it seems Fred’s description fit.”
Apparently he’d said exactly the wrong thing, because Kirby’s jaw shot up. “I can be bad.”
Totally at sea at how to get out of this conversation, Sebastian quickly backtracked. “I have no doubt you can be anything you want to be.”
She laughed, diffusing the tension that had surrounded them like a force field ever since the other woman’s arrival. “And isn’t that exactly what you’re supposed to say?”
Long tables had been set up beneath two large tents with tall heaters providing warmth. The red crustaceans, served with bowls of hot, dripping butter, more than lived up to their promise. As he cracked his apart with the supplied tools, Sebastian, who had quickly discovered the reason for the red bib Kirby had insisted he wear, wondered if Earthlings knew how fortunate they were to have such an abundance of rich and delicious foods.