He spoke over his shoulder while reclaiming the basket. “You’re not planning to eat with me?”
She had been. She’d fed Kate, then loaded her daughter and the food in the car and raced to her in-laws’ place, thinking she’d have dinner at the motel. But she felt too jittery for food right now. She wasn’t sure why Sebastian’s touch had affected her so deeply. She’d been alone with men plenty of times since Oliver’s death-at work, at home, in the car. She’d been fine.
But she’d never been this attracted to any of them. That had to be the difference-that and the fact that they were standing next to a bed.
“I’ve already had dinner,” she lied and tilted the screen of his computer so she could avoid the glare of the lamp. “Wesley Boss isn’t WhosYourDaddy, is he?”
Sebastian decided to make Malcolm wait. He didn’t want to come across as too eager, didn’t want it to seem as if Mary was always online, hoping to hear from him. The role he was playing would be more believable if Malcolm had to work for the attention he craved. Earlier, Sebastian had sent an e-mail from Mary, thanking him for the flowers. That would suffice until after dinner.
Jane sat at the desk, sipping the glass of wine she’d finally accepted when he was halfway through his meal. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being eat so much in one sitting,” she mused as he polished off a second gigantic piece of lasagna and yet another slice of garlic bread.
“I was lucky. I grew up in a home where my mother cooked. I miss that.”
She swiveled in the office chair, back and forth. The nervous energy in that motion told him she wasn’t quite as comfortable as she was hoping to seem. “Where’s your mother now?”
“Upstate New York.”
“Is she still with your father?”
Full at last, he put his plate aside. When he’d asked her for dinner, he’d assumed she could cook, and he’d been right. “No, he passed away a decade ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a blessing in the end,” he said, remembering those difficult days.
“What happened?” He doubted she would’ve asked had he not been so direct with her.
“After being perfectly healthy his whole life, he woke up one morning and started convulsing. Then he went into a coma. My mother got him to the hospital right away, but when he came to-” he shook his head “-when he came to, it became obvious that he’d suffered quite a bit of brain damage.”
Concern softened the hint of suspicion with which she seemed to view him. “What caused the convulsions?”
“A rare infection that’d gone straight to his brain. There was no warning, nothing we could’ve done to stop it.”
“How terrible!”
It had been terrible. Although Sebastian was grateful for the time they’d had at the end, he and his mother had spent three long years looking after Angelo, knowing he’d never recover, knowing how much he’d hate being so helpless. It was during that dark time that Emily had married Malcolm. Sebastian had been far too preoccupied with his job, his father and taking his turn as a custodial parent to pay attention to the kind of man she was dating. He wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to spot trouble even if he had paid attention. Malcolm was a cop, and cops were supposed to be safe. “As I said, it was a blessing in the end. I think he wanted to go.”
“Your mother hasn’t remarried?”
He pictured his trim, attractive mother. She looked twenty years younger than her age, but she didn’t seem interested in the men who asked her out. “No.”
Jane crossed her legs. “What does she think about you chasing after Malcolm?”
“I think she’d prefer it if I gave up and came home.”
“But you can’t.”
After what he’d learned about Jane, he was sure she understood why. “No.”
“So you have to hire strangers to cook for you and then you eat a meal for ten all at once.”
He refilled her wineglass. “When you leave, the food goes with you, right?”
“I’d let you keep it, but it doesn’t look as if there’s a fridge in this room.”
“There’s not.” He poured himself more wine. “You see my dilemma.”
Apparently pleased that he liked the food, she smiled as she sipped from her glass. It was a pretty smile, one that contrasted with the caution in her eyes.
He didn’t know exactly what had changed, but her coming to his room had somehow altered the chemistry between them. He’d realized she was attractive when they’d first met. He couldn’t miss that. But the two of them sitting here alone made him far too aware of her on a physical level, far too aware of the possibilities.
As if to avoid the awkwardness that sprang up with any silence, she turned to his computer. “Looks like Malcolm’s getting impatient.”
“What’s he saying?”
“‘Hey, where are you?’” she read.
“Tell him you had to get the kids to bed.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He couldn’t imagine why she’d think so. “No.”
“That’ll only remind him that Mary’s an exhausted mother. What’s sexy about that?”
“It might not be sexy, but it’s believable. It’s something the real Mary might say.”
“He won’t care if what we say is believable. People who have online relationships are usually trying to fulfill a fantasy.”
Again, the bed seemed to take up all the space behind them. “Are you talking from experience?”
“No. I can’t afford to have fantasies.”
“Everyone has fantasies, Jane.”
“Okay, then I could never afford to fulfill mine, especially with someone I couldn’t see. There are a lot of perverts on the Internet. There’s no way I’d expose my daughter to another man who could be like her father.”
This brought up a subject Sebastian had been curious about. “Did your husband ever hurt Kate?”
“That depends on what you mean by hurt,” she said. “He didn’t physically molest her, but he killed her uncle and hurt those she loved most. Living with that knowledge isn’t easy. And there’s always the genetic factor, you know? The question you’d ask yourself late at night-am I even remotely like him? Kate sees this scar on my neck every day, and she knows who put it there.”