He held them up to the light as if to inspect them.
“Looks like you’ve been keeping yourself busy,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the judgment out of his voice, not to mention hide his grave disappointment.
Clem grabbed them.
“Yep,” she said. “Once you unleashed the wild in me, well, it’s all been downhill since. Been one hookup after another over the past few months.”
He glared at her.
She jokingly pushed his shoulder.
“Why don’t you ask Pippa why I have a lifetime supply of condoms in my purse.”
“Because she’s your matchmaker?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny,” she said. “Because she learned the hard way what happens if you forget that little detail. Every day when I talk to her now, she asks if I have enough condoms. As if I’m a big consumer of them or something! And whenever she gets a chance she’ll stuff one into my purse. Like she’s hiding a medal of Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes, in there for me.”
He arched an eyebrow but remained silent while Clementine continued to throw items back in her purse.
“I can probably count on one hand the number of these things I’ve used in my life, and they were pretty much with you,” she said. “Not that that’s any of your business.”
He frowned. “You’re right,” he said. “It isn’t my business, is it?”
She shook her head.
“With the exception of the ones I used with you. But that’s in the past,” she said, standing up and dusting her hands off on her legs. “Well, I’d better be running.”
She rifled in her purse and pulled out the strip of prophylactics.
“Here,” she said, shoving them into his palm. “You’ll have a much greater need for these things than I will.”
“Clem—”
She looked at her watch, feigning impatience.
“Sorry, Sebastian,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet Pippa in ten minutes so I’d better run. Good luck, like, with everything and all.”
She hurried off before he even had a chance to protest—not as if he would anyhow. But this way, no one’s feelings would be hurt. At least not overtly.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Pippa was pulling up to park her car right when Clementine returned home.
Since she was just starting to get her appetite back, she showed up with two pints of gelato for them to share.
“Pistachio for me, and stracciatella for you, my dear,” she said to Clem as she handed a carton to her friend and reached in the kitchen drawer for two spoons.
They took their snack into the study and sprawled out on two overstuffed chintz sofas to pig out.
“This could not come at a better time,” Clem said. “I seriously needed some junk food for my soul.”
“What for?” Pippa said before sticking another fat spoonful in her mouth.
Clementine shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “I’m just feeling sort of drab and dreary I guess. It’s starting to get to be that time of year: gets dark early, everything feels cold and lonely. It sort of reflects my mood I guess.”
“Awww, I don’t want you to be cold and lonely, Clem,” Pippa said. “What can I do to help you? I could warm you up. Except that would require me getting out of this chair and I’m oh so comfortable. Besides, you can just grab that throw blanket by your chair and that’ll take care of that problem. So what about the lonely bit?”
“I’m just whining. Ignore me.”
“No, tell doctor Pippa your problems.”
Clem laughed. “It’s going to be the holidays soon. Everyone has lots of parties and dinners and they end up being couple-y things so much. Used to be you and I were a couple, but now you’ve got Topher, so I’m dateless. Of course Isabella’s schedule is full-up with royal things at Christmastime, so she’s not a good alternative date for me. I mean I can go to things, but I won’t have anyone to go with. Unless I go with Eduoardo, and that would smack of a world of desperation.”
“Not to mention is he even talking to you yet?”
Clem rolled her eyes.
“That man is so preoccupied with everyone else’s business, he really needs to just take a step back and worry about himself. I think Darcy gave him a tranquilizer to calm him down when that whole video thing erupted.”
Pippa laughed. “Methinks Eduoardo believes he was anointed the arbiter of all things in your family. I guess it’s his kneejerk reaction to losing a father. He thinks he needs to fill the void.”
“Yeah, well, at least my father was nice and didn’t holler at me.”
“I’m sure your brother means well,” Pippa said. “He just doesn’t have the most graceful way of showing it. But enough about your cranky brother. Let’s get back to your being down in the dumps.”
“Just what I want, to be constantly reminded that I’m feeling blue.” She gave Pippa a wink.
“So have you seen him?”
“Him?”
“Ahem,” Pippa said, clearing her throat. “Him.”
“You mean Eduoardo?”
“Eduoardo? No one wants to see Eduoardo. Well, maybe your mother, but the rest of us, not so much. I’m talking Sebastian. Have you seen him since he’s been back in town?”
“Oh, sure I did, thanks. Just today, in fact. He found all of your condoms, so I appreciated that.”
Pippa knit her brows.
“What was he doing rifling through your purse?”
“He wasn’t,” she said. “I ran into him, quite literally, and spilled the contents of the thing everywhere.”
“Well, good,” Pippa said, clapping her hands. “Maybe it gave him some ideas.”
“Of course it did. Ideas that I was sleeping around with enough people to need all those condoms in my purse.”
“Maybe it’ll make him jealous. That would be fitting.”
“Lest we forget, it was a mutual thing, he and I not becoming a ‘we,’” Clem said. “He can’t handle the commitment and I can’t handle his not handling the commitment. It seems to work well that way, at least.”
“I think if you tried a little refresher course with Sebastian, then maybe you could find yourself a date for some of those holiday functions. You’d be killing two birds with one stone, which is always nice and efficient.”
“You are incorrigible. Now enough of this foolish talk and let me wallow in my self-pity with a healthy dose of gelato. No doubt it will cure what ails me,” Clem said. “Instead I can stay home and babysit your puppy and eventually babysit your baby and I’ll be a puppy- and baby-loving spinster and all will live happily ever after. Except maybe me.”
“You need a change of scenery to perk you up,” Pippa said, holding up her finger. “And I’ve got just the idea. What say we make a long weekend of it next week and head up to my parents’ cabin in the mountains. They’re calling for snow. Maybe we can have the first ski run of the season. At the very least we can sip hot cocoa by a warm fireplace and get all cozy and in the mood for the holidays.”
“I don’t know, Pips,” Clem said. “I’ve got things to do for this wedding and all.”
“Wedding, schmedding. The princess would want you to go as much as I do if she knew you were in such a funk. Especially since it’s her son who’s got you there.”
“All right, fine. I’ll go,” Clem said. “Besides, with Sebastian lurking around town, it makes it hard, not knowing if he’s going to rear his unexpected head when I don’t need to be reminded that he’s here. It will be good for me to get away from the man.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sebastian entered the palace through the servant’s entrance and took the elevator up to the family corridor, waved hello to a suit of armor standing guard along with a couple of very old busts of Topher’s ancestors, and finally crossed past the private apartments of Topher’s siblings before arriving at his door and rapping on it hard.
Topher greeted him and led him across the Carrera marble foyer and into the living room, whe
re the weak winter sun was fading in the late-afternoon light. He motioned for his cousin to take a seat on his custom Holstein hair-on-hide leather sofa.
“Dude,” Sebastian said. “You’ve got a cow for a chair.”
Topher laughed. “I know, right? That’s what you get when you hire decorators to make the place look livable.”
Sebastian looked around the apartment and nodded his head.
“I’d say this is pretty damned livable. I mean, if you have to live with your parents and all...”
Topher smacked him jokingly.
“You’re one to talk,” he said. “At least I have my own quarters, whereas you’re parking it in your childhood bedroom.”
“Yeah, well at least I have an excuse.”
Topher raised an eyebrow.
“And that would be?”
“Well, you’re permanent here,” he said.
“Let me get this straight: your excuse is that I’m permanent? That’s lame,” he said. “And if you’re not permanent—even though we’d love for you to be—then what exactly is your status?”
Sebastian scratched his unshaven face, pondering the question. “Can I just say undeclared?”
“Does that mean you’re considering sticking around, maybe toughing it out in Monaforte for a while?”
“Do I have to know what I plan to do?”
Topher walked to the kitchen and grabbed two beers out of the fridge, opened them both, then returned to the living room and handed one to his cousin. He plopped down on the couch and kicked his feet up on the coffee table.
“The nice thing about having your own place is you can abuse your furniture to your heart’s content,” he said, pointing at his social faux pas. He picked up a nearby rubber band and started playing with it.
“Well, in that case, you’ve sold me,” Sebastian said. “As long as I can be subversive, I’m all in.”
“All right, so that wasn’t such a great selling point. What else can I use to lure you?” he said, scratching his head. “Let’s see...What about the Santa Christus festival? You always loved that as a child, eating your way through the gingerbread house.”
Santa Christus was a holiday in which the palace opened its doors for guests to eat down an enormous gingerbread house that takes up the entire ballroom of the palace during the holiday season.
“Brilliant idea! If I were five years old,” Sebastian said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, my tastes run toward beer and pretzels more than gingerbread cookies and gumdrops now.”
Topher aimed the rubber band at his cousin and shot him in the chest with.
“Hey! That hurt!”
Topher ignored him, appearing to suddenly be deep in concentration.
“I’ve got it!” Topher said, turning toward Sebastian, who’d just grabbed the remote and turned on a football match.
“Let’s head up to the mountains,” he said. “Let’s go for a long weekend. They’re calling for fresh powder. We can launch the season in style. I’ve got a place we can stay that is super luxurious with an amazing view. There’s a hot tub pool and the place is ski-in ski-out. They’ll be decorated for the holidays so it’ll feel like a party.”
Sebastian gave that some thought. If he had to choose between skiing in the Alps or spending the weekend watching his parents’ mating game, he totally picked the former.
“You buying all weekend?”
“The entire trip is on me,” Topher said. “A good will gesture for you saving my life.”
“Oh stop with the lifesaving,” Sebastian said, waving his hand to dismiss that notion. “If I’d have been doing my job, you’d never have had that happen.”
“What? Because you’d have called all your seagoing creature pals on your conch shell telephone and asked them to put down their venomous weapons?” Topher started to laugh. “It was an accident, dude. Leave it at that. And this ski weekend is mandatory. You need some fresh scenery to clear out the cobwebs in your head. Deal?”
Sebastian took a swig of beer.
“Guess it beats hanging with the ’rents, being a third wheel. I’m in.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
By the time Pippa came around to get Clementine, the sun was low in the sky and crowded out by dense clouds filled with the promise of snow. In fact, snowflakes had started to fall earlier in the day; there was enough white stuff dusting the roadways to prompt Clementine to get moving. She hoped to avoid traveling on slick roads during their trip to the mountains. She wanted to get up there, get past those avalanche galleries, which always made her nervous because people drove too fast in them, and settle into a warm cabin with a fire in the fireplace.
She loaded her suitcase into the trunk of Pippa’s sports car and came around to the front.
“You want me to drive?” Clem said.
“Nope. I got it,” Pippa said. “Hop in and let’s get a move on.”
As twilight set in, lights came on across the countryside. With the snow falling gently and the twinkling Christmas lights that adorned farmhouses along the way, Clementine couldn’t help but feel a little bit festive.
“I love this time of year,” she said. “Even though it gets dark so early and the plants and things have all died off, there’s something sort of hopeful and cheery about the lights, the music, even the jovial spirit people seem to adopt.”
“I know it,” Pippa said. “Even in my household, where my parents didn’t exactly stir up the warm fuzzies, we always had fun at Christmastime and on Santa Christus Day, so I always look forward to it.”
“And this year even more,” Clem said, pointing at her belly.
“Yikes,” Pippa said, patting her stomach. “Who’d have predicted that one at this time last year?”
Clementine laughed.
“Definitely not me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have wagered on your having a kid, let alone marrying, in at least a decade.”
Pippa swatted at her.
“Hey!” she said. “You think I’m some sort of sad-sack loser?”
“Oh, so if you don’t get married and have a baby—or is it have a baby and then get married?” she said with a wink, “you’re relegated to loser status?”
“You know what I mean,” Pippa said. “Though if I had my wish, I’d wave my magic wand and get a certain someone to materialize in your life.”
“Don’t bother.” Clementine shook her head. “It was a fun fling, but that was all it was. Besides, who’s got time for that sort of thing now?”
She knew in her heart she was totally BS’ing her friend. She really should quit the charade and finally confess that she wouldn’t mind a little more time with Sebastian. She hadn’t expected that he would occupy her thoughts, all these months later. But that was probably just because of the drama that unfolded with Topher and everything that followed. And of course, since she was working for his mother, there were continual reminders of his presence. Once he headed back to the Caribbean, no doubt thoughts of Sebastian would dissipate. She could hardly wait.
~*~
It was almost dark by the time Topher picked up Sebastian. They loaded their skis onto the roof rack and their gear in the back of the SUV and left the city lights in their rearview mirror in no time.
“So how goes it with a pregnant fiancée? Says no one, ever,” Sebastian said with a little snicker.
“Laugh all you want but it goes really well, thanks,” Topher said. “Pip’s feeling terrific and hey, I’m lucky to be alive, so how cool is it that we finally ended up together? And a baby on the way. Life is good. Oh, and pregnancy makes her horny.”
“I don’t even believe that last part. And the rest of it sounds stressful to me. Poopy nappies, sleepless nights, no sex ever again?” He shook his head.
“That’s an old wives’ tale, I can assure you. Otherwise, the world would be filled with one-child households. Besides, we’re only just getting started with the sex bit.”
“Maybe so, but I bet you it’s gonna be the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind
,” Sebastian said. “Between the wailing babies and exhaustion, who’s got time?”
“No one said it’ll be easy, but we’ll be fine. After all, we’re really looking forward to it,” Topher said. “So I guess that means you have no plans of ever procreating?”
“Never say never, but, uh, never.”
Topher laughed. “Fair enough,” he said. “Though my bet is when the right one comes around, you’ll be singing a different tune.”
Sebastian didn’t even want to speculate about whether the right one already came along. And then maybe he failed to act accordingly and passed her right on by.
“You think about maybe trying to get together with—”
“Nope. Don’t say it.”
“Oh come off it,” Topher said. “I’m going to say it. Clementine. Clementine, Clementine, Clementine. See? Not so bad, is it? Rolls off the tongue nicely.”
The last thing Sebastian needed was Clementine and tongues to be brought up in the same sentence.
“I thought we were trying to get away from things,” Sebastian finally said, heaving a deep sigh.
“I didn’t know getting away from things meant escaping Clem.”
“This has nothing to do with her,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m just going to get my ski on. Been a lot of years since I’ve been around snow. So enough worrying about women from my past and let’s go have a good time.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Pippa kept looking at her watch. Normally, Clem wouldn’t think twice about it, except that they were off on a little getaway where time wasn’t a factor. And she kept yawning.
“Am I boring you?” she finally asked.
Pippa laughed.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that this pregnancy thing makes me so tired,” she said. “I can’t seem to keep my eyes open past ten o’clock these days.”
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