Come As You Are(44)

The mention of her brother brings a radiance to her eyes. They sparkle when she talks about him. “She left for good when he was fifteen. He’s the reason I went to school in New York. I had a bunch of scholarships, but I needed to stay close and look after him. The only thing she left was the tiny condo she’d owned. I lived there with him when I was in college since he was still in high school. He was the most important thing to me—he still is—and he wound up doing a beautiful thing with his life.”

Her smile is so warm and earnest it reaches someplace far inside me, finding a home. It makes me care even more for her, when I’m already wading into the deep end, so deep that my don’t-get-involved-with-work-associates rule is close to breaking. “Kevin is my hero. He has the biggest heart, and the strongest sense of right and wrong.”

As she tells me about him, a stone of guilt digs against my ribs. Guilt for thinking she was after me for money. Guilt for wondering about her motives. She’s so genuinely focused on her brother, so giving of herself, and with the short straw she drew with her mom, I can’t see her in the same category as the women in my past.

“You’re good people,” I say, silently exonerating myself from doubting her a week ago. I don’t doubt her anymore. I know who she is.

She blushes. “Thanks. Speaking of good people and maybe not-so-good people, what do you think of Kermit La Franchi? He asked my best friend how the story was going. Isn’t that odd?”

I swallow hard, the pleasant balloon of our conversation now popped. “Sabrina, I think he knows about us.”

She cringes. “What?”

I tell her what happened in the hall after she hightailed it from the party, wishing I didn’t have to be the bearer of bad news. “He asked me for an interview too. I held him off, but he called Jennica and is trying to weasel his way in.”

“That’s why he said I stole his scoop. Which is ridiculous. But are you going to do one with him?”

“He’s determined, and Jennica convinced me since he’s becoming quite a playmaker in this space. But I won’t be talking to him until we’re done.”

She fidgets with her earring, twisting a daisy-petal stud back and forth. “What if he knows Bob Galloway? What if he says something to him about what he thinks happened with us at the party?”

“Why would he do that?”

Fear seems to flash across her eyes. “He’s Evil Kermit.”

“That was just a part he played,” I say, trying to reassure her, though I’m not entirely sure there’s nothing to worry about.

“I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone.”

And that—that I understand. “We’ll deny it. He has no evidence. All he knows is I had your halo, and that doesn’t prove anything. I don’t want you to lose this chance with the article and Up Next. I know how much it means to you.”

Her lips quiver, then she presses them together. Her voice is a feather when she speaks again. “Stop it. Stop being so sweet and thoughtful.”

“I’m not being sweet and thoughtful. It’s just how I feel.”

“And how you feel is because you’re good and generous, and I wish I didn’t have a job on the line.”

“Me too.” As I glance at the field where Carson tosses the softball to Jennica as they warm up, I know we all have something on the line.

I do my best at Haven to take away my employees’ worries by treating them well, treating them like family. I wish I could take away Sabrina’s worries. I wish I could do something to make her life easier. I don’t know what it would be though.

Grabbing my glove, I vow to try and figure it out as I play the game today.

“Wait.” She reaches for my shirtsleeve, her voice dropping to that low, sultry tone that absolutely obliterates my resolve. “Do you want to know how I could tell you and your brother apart?”

“How?”

She zeroes in on my face, her voice barely audible. “Your lips. I’d recognize them anywhere.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because they drew me to you. They’re the reason I talked to you that night. I wanted to kiss you as soon as I saw you.”

I ache with desire. It fills every cell in my body. “I wanted to kiss you. I wanted it so fucking much.”

And God, I want it again.

I want it again so badly that I strike out all three times I’m at the plate, because my mind is on what I can’t have.

The woman I’m falling for.



*

When the softball game is over, we head to a café. Ostensibly, she wants to talk about the future of tech, and we touch on that briefly, but mostly we just chat. She tells me more about her mom. She talks about Ray too, how devastated she was when he left her but how her work as a reporter was critical to her moving on. She poured herself into her job, and as she tells me this, I understand even more of what makes her tick—who she is beneath the mask she wore the night I met her.

“Remember the dress I wore to the costume party? The angel wings?”

“Yes. They were satin or something soft.”

“Chiffon. That was my unused wedding dress. Everything was ready, then he called and said he was leaving the country.”

My jaw tightens. “Do you think he was cheating on you?”