I had no idea what she was talking about, until I nearly ran right into Seb, who stood motionless in the middle of the Neelys’ kitchen.
Big flowers and fine china covered the length of the big dining table, and several people I recognized chatted with drinks in their hands. Jazmine’s sister, Patty, and her wife, Emily, who waved at me from across the room. Mr. and Mrs. Neely’s best friends, a couple who owned a yacht and liked to do a lot of fishing in the lake.
But it was the conservatively dressed, middle-aged man next to them that snagged my attention. Someone I hadn’t seen since Nana’s funeral.
Captain Jansen of the US Coast Guard.
Seb’s father.
Looking like a deer in headlights, Captain Jansen stood alongside a woman about his age. I was stunned to see him. Seb, too. It felt like we’d been hoodwinked.
Mrs. Neely jogged over in kitten heels and a flowing floral caftan, calling out to us, “Kids! So happy you’re here. I see you’ve already noticed our surprise guests this morning. I ran into Katie in town and insisted they come.”
I didn’t know this Katie person but remembered Seb mentioning that his dad had his hands full these days. Guess the captain finally worked through his wife’s abandonment and was now on a second-chance romance. The two of them looked nervous. Easy to understand why. It felt like I was walking into the movie setof some Western and had stumbled upon a good, old-fashioned standoff.
“Good morning, Sebastian,” Captain Jansen said stiffly. He was fit for a man his age, but impossibly rigid. Crew cut that was more gray than blond. Permanent frown on his long face.
“What are you doing here?” Seb asked in a low voice.
“Enjoying my Sunday, seeing my son,” he answered formally. “You don’t come by the house anymore, so I had to come to you.”
“Just giving the two of you space,” Seb said gruffly. “Like you asked.”
Captain Jansen looked at me and cleared his throat. “Hello, Paige. It’s good to see you back from college. I’d like to introduce you to my fiancée, Katie Yoshida. Katie, this is another of Seb’s childhood friends, Paige Malone.”
A middle-aged Japanese American woman with short hair and a sweet face canted her head at me, pushing glasses farther up her nose. “The Harvard girl,” she said.
I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
“Katie teaches out at a middle school north of town,” Captain Jansen informed me.
Huh. Another teacher. Seb’s mother had been a teacher, too: our first-grade teacher, in fact. Maybe Seb was thinking the same thing, by the way he anxiously tapped his fingers against his side. But how could I blame Katie for that? Not her fault. I smiled at her. “What subject do you teach?”
“Art,” she said cheerfully.
“Oh! I’m studying art history.”
“They told me. I’d love to hear more about that.” Katie brightened considerably, eager to share our mutual area of interest. And maybe I relaxed a little, feeling the same, because that’s the onlyreason I could think as to why I didn’t consciously realize I’d slipped my arm around Seb’s waist. Not until Captain Jansen’s eyes squinted suspiciously at me.
Seb and I hadn’t talked about this. Were we going totally public with our relationship? Should I be keeping it secret until we were certain?Weren’twe certain?
Regardless, this was Seb’s father, and there was a lot of baggage between our families. Captain Jansen and Nana hated each other, in the end. She called him Captain Deadbeat Dad all over town. He threatened to get a restraining order against her. It was... complicated.
I tried to stealthily remove my arm from Seb’s waist.
Seb stopped me. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me toward him.
Captain Jansen’s face twisted with surprise. He didn’t know what to say, I suppose, because when Mr. Neely strolled over a moment later, the captain looked relieved.
“Would you look at this?” Mr. Neely said, opening his arms wide. “All our babies in one place. It’s a Wags reunion. We’ve got to get a picture of this. We should dig out the old pirate hats and do one of those photo re-creations—pose you in the same way as that photo in the hall, when you were just little bitty things. Look at you now.”
Benny audibly groaned. I almost laughed.
“Nope,” Jazmine said. “No one’s doing any now-and-then homage photos.”
“Maybe after a few mimosas,” Seb said, waggling his brows at Mr. Neely, who laughed and escorted Seb away.
I didn’t need to worry about Captain Jansen. No man alivecould have a bigger stick up his butt, and he wasn’t about to start any kind of awkward conversation with me. Oranyconversation.
