“You mentioned a sitter.” He tilted his head as if I’d just posed a complex riddle. “Are you amom?”
I took a quick mental inventory of my conversation with Lu once I’d turned my back on the bar. Had I said anything compromising? Anything Sebastian could use against me? Had he heard the part about how sexy his name sounded with a Latin accent? “Were youeavesdropping?”
“Just making sure we hadn’t run you offalready.”
If he was teasing me, there was no hint of a smile on his face. “Give me more credit than that. I had a call totake.”
He squinted down the street. With the onset of fall, days were getting shorter, but the sun was still setting. “So the kid,” he said, turning back to me. Today’s tie, the color of a cloudless sky, almost made his piercing eyes look blue. “Are you a singleparent?”
“No.” I had yet to see Sebastian this interested in me, and his focused gaze made my heart flutter. I tucked my hair behind my ear, almost wishing he’d let up, despite the fact that I’d been hoping for some kind of breakthrough with him. “Well, sortof.”
“How is someonesort ofamom?”
“My dog.” I smiled. “Bruno.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You have ababysitterfor yourdog?”
I’d shored up this defense before. My ex hadn’t understood my devotion to Bruno, or why I’d willingly take on the responsibility of a terminally sick dog. Not even Luciano got it all the time, and he knew all the shitty details of mysituation.
“How long are you going to keep making excuses to bealone?”
I could easily truncate this conversation with the truth, but Bruno’s condition wasn’t something I liked to talk about. Or think about. Or live through. I certainly wasn’t about to open up about it to someone who couldn’t care less about my personal life, so I went with another perfectly valid, totally truthful, but possibly less convincingargument.
“For your information, he’s a big dog that needs a lot of attention,” I said. “Not just exercise but mental and emotionalstimulation.”
“Emotional . . .stimulation.”
“Smart dogs—and people for that matter, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand that—need to occupy their brains or they get into trouble. When Bruno gets bored or tired, he chews up stuff or figures out ways to get into things he shouldn’t, like thepantry.”
“Is this an actual dog or ahuman?”
Ah. Andthatwas the fundamental reason Sebastian and I would never get along. The issue wasn’t our opposing management styles, rival sports teams, or clear personality differences. Sebastian was clearly not a dog person, while I would take a bullet formine.
“There’s no human I’d rather spend time with,” I said, “so he might as well beone.”
“I should’ve guessed by your unfortunate people skills that you’d be prone to anthropomorphizing, and now misanthropytoo.”
“AndIshould’ve known you’d hate animals,” I snappedback.
Suppressing a smile, he held my stare and didn’t deny the accusation. He dropped his eyes to my mouth. My neck. My chest, hips, and ankles. And still, didn’t deny it. He just stood there, inspecting, studying, charting me like a map, or whatever he wasdoing.
“I can’t quite figure you out, Georgina. Sometimes, you’re one way . . . and then you go and actlike. . .”
“A bitch?” I asked somewhathopefully.
“What?” Sebastian’s eyes widened. “I—God, no. You aren’t exactly vanilla ice cream on a summer’s day, but I wouldn’t put it thatway.”
Plain, boring, and easily run over—was that how he saw me? And why did I care what he thought about me above anyone else, even Vance? Vanilla ice cream—really? “Why’d you come out here again?” Iasked.
“To be polite and check on you. I know the guys can beintimidating.”
“And what about you?” Iasked.
“Me? I’m about as menacing ascinnamon.”
If Sebastian’s plan was to bewilder me into silence, it was working. I wasn’t even sure there was an appropriate response to that. “I don’t getit.”
He shrugged, again jingling keys or change in his pocket. “Just a saying we have in NewEngland.”
