We both turned. Hannah hurried toward us, carrying two cardboard bakery boxes stacked in her arms.
I looked up at him, and that’s when I saw it—the most genuine, unguarded smile I’d ever seen on Sebastian Reid’s face. Not the sharp one he used on clients. Not the cool, distant one he wore in the office. Something softer. Something real.
“Give me a minute,” he said before turning back to Hannah. “Grandma would be mad if I didn’t take it.”
Hannah grinned and thrust one of the boxes at him. “She made your favorite bread pudding.” Then she handed the other to me. “And this one’s for you. Trust me—it’s incredible.”
I took the box from her. “Thank you.”
Before I could say anything else, she launched herself atBash. He wrapped an arm around her without hesitation, pressing a kiss to the top of her head like it was the most natural thing in the world.
What alternative universe had I just stepped into?
“Tell Aunt Moira, I’ll see her soon.”
“You’ll have to come to dinner,” she called before heading into the kitchen.
I stared openly at him. He slid his hand back to the small of my back and nudged me toward the front.
Outside, his car was already waiting. The older gentleman rounded the hood, handed Mr. Reid the keys, and opened my door.
“Hope you had a good night, Mr. Reid.”
He nodded at the older man. “Always here, Arthur. Thank you.”
I slid into the passenger seat. Sebastian rounded the front of the car, the streetlight catching on the edge of his jaw, and for a second it was like seeing him again for the first time—dangerous, controlled, and devastatingly human.
He folded into the driver’s seat but didn’t start the engine right away. The silence wasn’t awkward. It just was.
What had I just witnessed?
“You okay?” he asked, low, like he wasn’t sure if he should ask at all.
I nodded even though I wasn’t sure I was. “Just…processing.”
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “Yeah. I figured.”
He finally turned the key, the engine purring to life. As we pulled away from the curb, the bistro disappeared behind us, but the version of him I’d seen inside, the one the magazines never talked about, stayed with me.
What was his connection with Bastian’s? Hannah? The grandmother that was mentioned? Aunt Moira? Could I even ask?
He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting casually on the console, close enough that if I curled my fingers just an inch, I could touch him.
I didn’t.
But the sensation in my chest—that coil of anticipation, fear, excitement—felt eerily familiar. The way I felt right before walking into a scene with my master. Unsure. Thrumming. Alive.
And I hated how easily my body remembered that.
But I thought about it as I stared at the city lights.
“Bastian’s was the first place my granddad worked when he got to Seattle. It was a little pizza place back then,” Sebastian said, answering the question I hadn’t voiced.
“He came over from Ireland when things weren’t great. When the owner got sick, my granddad stepped up. Shocked everyone when the man offered him a deal—run it for five years, then buy it when he retired.”
A small smile pulled at Sebastian’s mouth. “He made it his own after that. Turned it into the place you just saw.”
He glanced toward the windshield. “My aunt runs it now. Hannah’s grandma.”
