“I buffed away the worst of the dirt,” she said. “I don’t want to completely destroy the patina, but I could use your help with the polishing.”
They both pulled on latex gloves and set to work. “I’ve got a pressure-washer that would blast these parts clean a lot faster.”
“Bite your tongue,” she said with a laugh. “This clock is two hundred years old.”
“And I’m thirty-seven and have red blood in my veins and think you’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.”
She leaned in for a kiss, but her gloved hands were gunky with brass polish and she held them out to her sides. His hands were just as bad, so they touched nowhere except their lips. When she tried to retreat, he followed with his lips still locked on hers. Even when they started laughing, he continued kissing her, pressing a trail of kisses along her jaw and down her neck.
The ring of the doorbell startled them. It gave her the excuse to finally pull away.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Jack asked.
“No,” she said as she pulled the rubber gloves off to lay them on the newspaper. “With everything going on at the Roost tomorrow, I’d better answer it.”
She headed down the hall to look through the peephole. A man holding a bouquet of red peonies stood on her porch. His handsome face was carved with emotion, and her heart began to thud. She looked away, gathering her thoughts.
It couldn’t be, but the doorbell rang a second time, and when she looked through the peephole again, there could be no doubt.
“Who is it?” Jack called out from the dining area.
She gathered a breath and tried to sound normal. “It’s Sebastian Bell.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Alice couldn’t believe Sebastian was actually here on her front porch. She flung the door open and stared, taking in his dark, tousled hair. He looked healthy and vibrant, with high cheekbones and a nose that was a little too big for his face but somehow made him seem even more handsome. His white dress shirt was open at the collar, exposing the strong column of his neck, and his soulful eyes looked at her as if he wanted to lay the world at her feet.
“Alice,” he said, a world of emotion packed into that single word. He said it as though in prayer, with hope and yearning and regret. Longing was carved into every line of his expression, and his dark eyes were like a window straight into his soul. Heextended the bouquet of peonies, and when she didn’t reach for them, he lifted her hand to wrap her fingers around the stems of the bouquet. She took them, too stunned to move, to speak, to jumpstart her brain that had stopped functioning.
Flowers weren’t the only thing he’d brought. A Louis Vuitton suitcase sat at his feet. “Can I come in?”
Was this a dream? It couldnotbe happening, but when she tried to speak, her tongue wouldn’t move; all she could do was gape at him.
“Alice? What’s going on?” Jack had come to stand beside her and stared at Sebastian with surprise and a healthy dose of contempt.
Of all the ways she’d imagined running into Sebastian again, not once had she pictured Jack striding forward to speak for her because she was too dumbfounded to form a single sentence.
“You can take that bag and crawl back beneath whatever rock you’ve been living beneath,” Jack said in an oddly calm voice.
Sebastian acted as if he hadn’t heard. “Alice, it’s starting to rain. Let me inside and we can talk.”
Itwasstarting to rain. She couldn’t leave him standing outside. Mrs. Wieland, the nosy neighbor next door, might snap a photograph and stir up the hornet’s nest of publicity again.
She stepped back and gestured him inside. Sebastian smiled in relief and lifted his suitcase, while Jack sputtered in outrage.
“Why don’t you tell him to jump off a cliff?” Jack bit out.
“I can’t leave him outside in the rain.”
“He left you outside to get arrested and hauled to jail,” Jack said in a tight voice.
“Hey, I didn’t know anything about that,” Sebastian said, already walking down the corridor into the main room of her townhouse. He set his bag down and craned his neck to look all around the interior, his admiring gaze taking in the wall ofbooks, the mantel with its collection of Meissen figurines, the lace, the dried flowers.
“Ilovethis place,” he said. “It suits you.” Then he saw the mess of the disassembled grandfather clock on the table. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Yes,” Jack said at the same moment Alice said, “No.”
Sebastian heard only Alice. “Good,” he said as he smiled into her eyes. “I’ve been traveling since daybreak . . . English time. It’s good to finally arrive.”
