“Sebastian. What are you doing here?” He’d never been to her house before. She pushed through the water to the steps and got out, grabbing the towel she’d put by the edge of the pool. She dried off while walking to him, feeling self-conscious because he’d never seen her in a bathing suit before. Not that it mattered. Not to him, anyway.

He stood as she approached, picking up his suit jacket and tossing it over his shoulder. “I heard about the skeleton found at the Blue Ridge Madam today. I wanted to see if you were all right. You wouldn’t answer your phone.”

“It’s fine. Everything will be fine,” she said, which was what she’d been saying all afternoon. If she said it enough, maybe it would even become true.

“But how are you?”

“I’m fine, too.” She wrapped her towel tightly around her, holding it together at her chest with her hand. She looked back at the main house, wondering what her mother thought of Sebastian being here. “I can’t believe you braved my parents just to see if I was all right. I hope they were nice to you.”

He didn’t answer directly. “I’m used to the looks. I’ve gotten them all my life. The important thing is, your mother let me in. That wouldn’t have happened fifteen years ago. Don’t worry about me. I can survive just about anything.”

For some reason, that struck a nerve. She had no idea why. “You don’t think I can?”

He stared at her without a word. She’d never really been on her own. She was still living with her parents. She understood why he might think that.

“Let’s go in,” she said, leading him to the pool house. She looked back to the main house one more time. Her mother was now watching from the French doors. “How long have you been out here?”

“Awhile. You have a nice backstroke.”

Paxton opened the door, and he followed her in. She quickly grabbed some notes she’d been making from the coffee table and stuffed them in her tote bag.

“Would you like something to drink? I think all I have is whiskey.” Her mother had stocked the liquor cabinet in the pool house when she’d redecorated last year, but whiskey was the only thing left, because Paxton didn’t like it. She found herself thinking she should restock. Sebastian always had a full bar. But restocking meant going into Hickory Cottage and facing her mother’s inevitable insinuations that she might be drinking too much. Never mind that Paxton rarely drank and that it had taken an entire year to go through what little had been in her liquor cabinet in the first place.

“No, thank you,” he said as he looked around. Her mother had had the place redecorated as a crazy dysfunctional thank-you to Paxton for not moving out entirely. The place was meant to feel like a vacation home or a beach house. The colors were white and sand and gold, all the furniture was square and soft, and the carpet was textured. They weren’t choices Paxton would have made. Nothing in this place bore her signature, not like at Sebastian’s house. Whenever she dreamed of being in a home, it was never here. Sometimes it was the townhouse she’d almost bought last year. Sometimes it was a place she’d never seen before. But she always knew it was hers. This place smelled of lemons. Always. And she could never make it go away. The home she dreamed of smelled of fresh grass and doughnuts.

“So, you’re fine,” Sebastian said as he sat down on her couch. He wasn’t interested in the details of the skeleton they’d found at the Madam. He was worried about her. No one else around her had reacted like this to the news.

“Yes,” she said, trying to laugh. “Of course.”

He didn’t look like he believed her. Sometimes she didn’t think it was fair that he knew her this well.

“Well, actually,” she said, “I feel like hyperventilating.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

“No. Because I can’t hyperventilate. I want to, but I can’t. It’s all built up here, and I can’t let it out.” She patted her chest with the hand holding the towel together. “Colin is going crazy trying to form a backup plan, because that one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old oak tree is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday, and it will have to be planted right away or we’ll lose it. Not to mention the several hundred thousand dollars it’s taken to uproot it and bring it here. But we don’t know if the police will clear the scene and let us plant it yet. And do you want to know why I turned off my phone?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Because the Women’s Society Club members keep calling, worried about being able to hold the gala at the Madam now. Several members wanted to have the gala at the country club, anyway, but they were outvoted. They’ve already called the club, scrambling to get it for the night of the gala, like they wanted to in the first place. They seem so eager to believe that this is going to make everything, all the hard work that went into the restoration, fail. The manager at the Madam even said some people have called, worried about their reservations, when it doesn’t even officially open for guests until September.” Her voice was pitching, and she stopped and took a deep breath.

Sebastian stood and walked over to her. He took her by her arms, looked calmly into her eyes, and said, “You can’t control everything, Pax. I keep trying to tell you this. You have this remarkable resistance against letting some things just happen. If you take a step back, you’ll see that when this blows over, no one will question having the gala at the Madam. Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning. And for every person who cancels their reservation, someone will reserve a room solely because of this. There are a lot of people out there who like a taste of the macabre.”

“But this isn’t meant to be macabre!” she said. “This is supposed to be perfect.”

“Nothing is ever perfect. No matter how much you’d like for it to appear that way.”

She shook her head. She knew that. She just didn’t know how to live any other way. She’d been this way her entire life, crying if her ponytails were uneven or if she wasn’t the best in dance class. She didn’t know how to stop it, as much as she wanted to.

“Just let it go, darling,” he said, drawing his arms around her, not caring that she was wet. This, this, was why she loved him so much. “Whatever it takes, just let it go.” With her hand still clutching the towel, she couldn’t hug him back and stay covered, but she realized she liked that she could fold herself into him this way. She liked feeling small. She put her head on his shoulder and could feel his breath on her neck.

Her heart picked up speed, and she was sure he could hear it.

As the seconds passed by, she could almost feel the rope winding around them as the sheer force of her desperation and desire pulled her closer to him. She slowly let the towel drop and lifted her arms around him, grazing her chest with his. She raised her head from his shoulder and put her cheek to his, nuzzling him slightly, just a small graze. She could feel his beard stubble, but his hair was so light she’d failed to notice it before.

She was overwhelmed. That’s the only reason she could think to justify her actions, her weakness. She turned her head in an excruciatingly slow movement, and her lips found his. Her hands went to his hair, and she opened her lips. He wasn’t unwilling. That’s what surprised her the most. After a moment of surprise, he actually began to kiss her back. Her heart sang. Before she knew it, she was walking him to the couch and pushing him to sit. She straddled him, trying to kiss past the rest of his barriers, to get him into that seductive place when their eyes had met all those years ago when he was kissing someone else. If she just tried hard enough, she could make this happen. She could make him love her the way she loved him.