“So maybe a fling’s not such a bad thing,” Charlotte said. “You had some fun, you let your hair down, you got it out of your system, and now you can move on.”
Which sounded good, coming from her mother.
If only she could get Sebastian out of her system, but that was proving to be an impossible task.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was therapeutic for the family—Sebastian included—to tuck away at a resort in the Whitsundays while they all recovered from the trauma of nearly losing Topher, both physically (for Topher) and emotionally (for the rest of them).
While Sebastian was used to having a certain degree of lazy days—he did, after all, make his life in a vacation destination and had chosen to carve out a relatively simple existence on the boat—he really doubled-down in slothful living. Which meant sleeping late each day, waking in time for Bloody Marys and brunch, then settling down for cabana drinks poolside for the duration of the day.
Sebastian was able to help Topher tie all of the loose ends together with his study project so that he could finally be done with it. While they’d originally planned to sail around for several weeks more, their plans had definitely changed.
Once Pippa was on the scene, Topher was caught up with her nonstop. They even shared a room, so Sebastian was on his own for the most part, even though he was happy to hang out with his cousins and catch up. It had been such a long time since he’d been around family for an extended period of time, he found it actually enjoyable.
“So, Bass,” Isabella said. “What are the chances you’ll end up back in Monaforte? We miss you there, you know.”
“Hell if I know,” he said with a shrug. “If you’d have asked me that a few days ago, my answer would have been never. But I’m learning to never say never, I guess.”
If he were to be truthful, he was starting to come around to the idea of considering life after sailing. As much as he was one with the water, he realized the limitations of living on a boat when it came to human connections. Sure, he had a community of superficial friends and sailboat “cruiser” buddies who spent their days sailing in tropical climes all over the world, but he suddenly appreciated the value of surrounding himself with those he’d known since childhood who would always have his back.
“Let’s all pile on Sebastian and force him to come back home,” Isabella said to her siblings, at which point they all, quite literally, piled on top of him on his lounge chair.
“Hey, hey, you’ll break this thing,” Sebastian said beneath a mountain of cousins. “Or you’ll suffocate me. Neither of those is a good option.”
“We just want you to know we wuv you,” Luca said jokingly in his worst faux baby voice.
“Yeah well that’s sure to motivate me,” Sebastian said, “to go to the furthest corners of the earth to avoid it.”
“You wouldn’t leave us now that you realize how much fun we are,” Isabella said.
“All right. All right. How’s this for a slight concession?” he said. “I’ll go back to Monaforte with you all, but only to be sure our man Topher, here, is gonna live. And to do my parents a big favor and help out with last-minute wedding things. Even if this wedding does baffle me completely.”
“So,” Pippa said, tiptoeing around that other Monaforte factor that could be in play. “While you’re in the neighborhood and all...”
“Uh uh,” he said shaking his head. “Not going there. She’s the one who cut me off. I can take a hint. She doesn’t want me messing with her head or whatever, I don’t know. But I’ll respect her wishes. Not gonna go where I’m not wanted.”
What he didn’t say was that all he really wanted was to go precisely where he wasn’t wanted. Too bad that wasn’t an option.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was the first time in ages that Isabella, Pippa, and Clementine could get together to catch up. Normally they’d have done this over a bottle of wine, but for Pippa, at least, that was off the table for a while. Nevertheless, they all gathered at her parents’ sumptuous villa that stood on a bluff overlooking the Mediterranean. For all intents and purposes it was Pippa’s home, since her parents rarely were there, which meant she had the run of the place.
“Oh my goodness, look at this little baby,” Isabella said, scooping up Pippa’s black Labrador puppy who greeted them at the door. “You’ve been hiding this from me! How could you have not told me to come smother your puppy with kisses before now?”
“I didn’t want to freak the poor dog out,” Pippa said. “Thought it would be good for her to adjust to a normal life before any weirdos have their way with her.”
Isabella smiled. “I know that’s just the cranky hormones talking so I’ll choose to ignore it.”
“Who me? Cranky hormones?” Pippa said. “Why I resemble that! I’ve got nothing but happy hormones that have encamped in my body and made me throw up with regularity.”
“I’m sure you are happy since Toph is okay,” Clem said. “And, since you and Toph have finally figured out that you love each other.”
Isabella held up her hands in protest.
“No ooey-gooey talk about love that involves one of my brothers,” she said. “I want no details about your relationship. Just tell me where to show up for the wedding and I’ll be there.”
“So that means no talk about the baby?” Pippa said with a smile.
Isabella stuck her fingers in her ears.
“La-la-la. Immaculate conception. La-la-la.”
Pippa playfully jabbed her with her elbow.
“You are such a doofus, you know that?”
“So, let’s change the subject,” Isabella said. “Clem, how’s the planning going for the wedding of the century?”
“You are the smart aleck today,” Clem said, laughing. “Actually you’ll be happy to know your zia is opting for a completely understated wedding. She even agreed to not do it on Christmas day, so as not to take people away from their homes on a holiday.”
Isabella lifted an eyebrow.
“Interesting,” she said. “So maybe my zia and zio have actually grown up. Evidently you can teach an old dog new tricks.”
“You can’t very easily teach a puppy many new tricks, however,” Clementine said, as the puppy was biting hard on her fingers despite being told not to. “These razor teeth hurt!”
“So in all of your wedding planning, have you crossed paths with Sebastian?” Pippa asked.
“Are you seriously going to ask me that again?”
“Well, inquiring minds want to know,” she said. “Besides, you two make a really cute couple, if only you’d stop being stubborn enough to recognize it.”
“Honestly, I don’t have time to be a cute couple anyhow,” Clementine said. “I wanted to let you guys know I think I’m officially an event planner now! I’ve had two more people ask me to help them out with parties. I think you could say I’m hanging my shingle now.”
“That’s fantastic!” Isabella said. “You’re so good at it, too. I’ll have to come up with some event to have you plan.”
They all laughed. Isabella had all the ready-made in-house planning she could ask for at the palace. But it was sweet of her to suggest it.
“You laugh, but just you wait,” she said. “I’ll figure out something to do that will knock your socks off. You’ll see.”
~*~
Sebastian had met his parents for lunch in Porto Castello on the waterfront. It was too cold to sit outside, but they had a window seat overlooking the marina, and the gorgeous sailboats reminded him that The Royal Blue was sitting idle in a marina at the Bitter End Yacht Club in a far warmer clime. Oddly this didn’t bother him nearly as much as he’d expected it to. Surely it didn’t hurt that he could up and hop a flight down to the BVI whenever he so desired, but he also didn’t feel a burning desire to get down there as soon as possible—a far cry from the past when he truly couldn’t wait to find his sea legs again.
The waiter filled their waters and returned with a bottle of
champagne.
“Something to celebrate?” Sebastian said.
“Lunch with our son is reason enough,” his mother said.
“You make me nervous,” he said. “As if there’s something you’re not telling me.”
His mother shook her head.
“Bass, sweetie, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
“I could use a good Cuban cigar,” his father said.
“I thought you stopped smoking,” Elisabetta said to Pierre.
“Cigarettes, long ago, dearest,” he said. “Other things? Well...”
It was hard to tell who rolled their eyes faster: her or Sebastian.
“Promise me you don’t smoke anything stronger than a cigar,” Sebastian said.
It was his father’s turn to roll his eyes.
“Kids these days,” he said to his wife-to-be-again, shaking his head mockingly. “They think they’ve cornered the market on the forbidden fruits of the world.”
“Speaking of fruit,” Elisabetta said, “pour me some more of that, would you please?”
Sebastian held out his glass as well. He was gonna need it with the direction this conversation was taking.
“So how’re you doing after everything that happened,” his mother asked Sebastian.
“By everything you mean Topher?”
He was hoping like hell she knew nothing about the Willy-T episode.
“Of course,” she said. “What else would I be talking about?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Nothing.”
“I’m sure it was hard, nearly losing Topher like that,” she said. “I just hope you’ve been able to work through your feelings about it all.”
The last thing Sebastian wanted to do was talk feelings with his parents, who seemed to have suddenly discovered that not only did they have them, but they had forgotten for lo those many years that their children did as well. And for some godforsaken reason they wanted to make up for lost time or something.
“Yeah, it was upsetting,” he said. “But I’m good now. He’s doing well, he’s excited about the baby and about marrying Pippa, so all’s well that ends well.”
The church bells from the Cathedral of Santo Giacomo il Maggiore began to chime at the top of the hour, and his mother got a swoony droopy-dog look in her eyes.
“Remember?” she said, looking at her soon-to-be husband again, pointing up in the air, Sebastian assumed she was pointing at the invisible sound.
Pierre smiled.
“You guys have a thing for church bells I didn’t know about?”
His mother scruffed his hair with her fingers.
“Silly,” she said. “That’s where your father and I got married the first time.”
Oh lord, he certainly didn’t want to retread the topic of their old marriage.
“Gee, the salmon sounds delicious,” he said as he quickly grabbed the menu and starting scanning it.
But his mother persisted. She affectionately brushed her knuckles across Pierre/Peter’s cheek.
“You were so handsome with that military uniform, your proud sword, that big hat with the feathers.”
He grabbed her hand in both of his and held her palm to his lips.
“And you were a vision of perfection in your white gown.” His lips trailed down her hand, past her wrist, and up her arm. Sebastian started feeling nauseous with all this overt affection. He motioned to the waiter to come take their order. Stat.
Finally, he was able to shift the conversation by persuading them to choose their entrées before the kitchen stopped serving lunch. Then he decided to get up and stroll to the restroom just to while away a little bit of time before his meal arrived.
As he returned to the table, he glanced outside and saw a streak of long blonde hair attached to a woman running along the shore. Clementine. It had to be her. He rushed to the main door and ran out to call for her just as a large bus drove by, blocking his view.
When he looked again, she was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Bass,” his mother said. “Look at me, please.”
They’d just finished dessert and were waiting for coffee to be served.
Sebastian, who had been staring out the window since catching a glimpse of a woman who looked like Clementine, reluctantly shifted his gaze to his mother with that sort of look on his face that every kid gets when they know their parent is about to give them the sex talk. Ugh.
“So what about you and Clementine?”
He did a double-take. How did she know about him and Clementine?
“Huh?”
“The rumor mill has it that you and Clementine were sweet on each other.”
“The Monaforte rumor mill, working overtime, then?” he said with arched brow, wondering how he was going to get to the root of her knowledge base. Lord only knew the rumor mill had plenty of ammunition; it was whether it got to her ear yet that he needed to know. “Do tell.”
“It’s just that your sister has been talking up Clementine as if she’d be a good match for you. She’s just so darling, I think your sister’s onto something.”
“What would Mallory know about Clementine and me?”
It was his mother’s turn to lift her brow.
“So there is a ‘Clementine and me’?”
Sebastian’s eyes grew wide.
“I didn’t say there was!” he said. “I just said how would Mallory have a bead on anything if there even was anything, which isn’t what there is, but I’m just saying if there was.”
“Oh, then that’s abundantly clear,” she said. “So what exactly is there if there isn’t anything? Your sister seems to think, and I quote, ‘Sebastian is emotionally constipated because he blames you and Papa for destroying his faith in relationships.’”
Sebastian choked on his water.
“I didn’t know that Mallory was my shrink,” he said. “I mean who could afford the rate she must charge to gain that sort of insight into the damaged psyche of the likes of me? Emotionally constipated.”
His mother reached over and patted his hand. “Bass, love, I think your sister is just concerned for you. We’ve all grown rather fond of your young woman—I for one, and I know your father as well, right dear?” She briefly nodded toward Pierre, who had one eye on a soccer match on the television screen at the bar. “We feel that if we are at fault for your being afraid of relationships, maybe we can help you to heal your wounds. After all, it’s only fair.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Honestly, Mum, I think I’ve got a hold on my personal life just fine. No need for my parents to intervene with the teacher to be sure I get a better grade.“
Of course you do, sweetheart,” she said. “But would it help if your father and I just apologized for whatever trauma we put you through? We really hadn’t a clue what to do when we started out together, especially when you were so young. We weren’t very good at parenting or marriage, for that matter. There, I said it.” She smiled in that “knowing
mum” sort of way. “But what we have done is we’ve gone back again and again and tried. And this time, well, I think we’re both very convinced that we can make it work out. Please, if you are going to take anything from watching your mother and father over the years, please take away that we kept doing it until we got it right.
“I know you think I’m flighty and vapid and maybe I did spend too much time being irresponsible, but I hope that it helps you to understand that we care for and love you and your brother and sister.” She looked at him imploringly. “And while I might not have been the standard-bearer of traditional motherhood, I do absolutely adore you all and hope you can forgive me my transgressions. People can change and can improve and I think it just took a long while for your father and me to figure things out.”
Sebastian sat with that thought for a while. In a way, she had a valid point. It seemed fair to take the sum total of one’s actions when evaluating one’s life and not to just extract bits and pieces—the ones that helped to reinforce the
story you subscribed to in your head. Maybe wisdom did come with age and perhaps at this point, he was ready to give them the benefit of the doubt. He shrugged. Who the hell knows?
“Look, Mum,” he said. “I really appreciate how far you two have come. I didn’t think I was ready to give you that, but I’ve come ’round enough now and I’m prepared to concede it. Props to you for going to the mat again. Maybe whatever you’ve caught is contagious, but even I’m feeling the good vibes from it all. So, sure, let’s call it a truce, or whatever, and we’ll start anew.”
Elisabetta stood up and leaned over and gave her son a huge hug.
“Perfect,” she said. “We’ve got everyone on board. And as an added bonus, now we can work on you and Clementine!”
Sebastian shook his head and waved his flattened hands side to side like a referee ruling a play out-of-bounds, indicating that was absolutely not on anyone’s agenda.
“Like I said, Mum, there’s nothing between me and Clem. And there never will be. So please, just leave it at that.”
Although he knew he could say that a hundred times and not really mean it. And if anything, maybe he secretly wished his mother could work her wiles on Clementine since he somehow seemed to fail so miserably.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Clementine was just leaving a meeting at the princess’s home to go over food options with the kitchen staff for the wedding, when she ran straight into Sebastian, causing her to drop her notepad and purse and scattering the contents all over the highly polished tiled floor in the entryway.
“Oh, goodness,” she said, flustered and feeling like an idiot. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Yup,” he said. “After Topher’s scare and all—”
“Wow. Poor Toph. That whole story was unbelievable. You must’ve been freaked out.”
“Just a bit,” he said as he bent over to help as she scurried to gather up her things. Clem grabbed the most immediately embarrassing things she could find, including a few stray tampons and a spare mini-pad, figuring no guy wanted to have any physical contact with such foreign objects. Meanwhile, as Sebastian was tossing in coins and pens and tissues and keys, his fingers settled on a strip of condoms.
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