And completely unfounded, I noted a moment later, when a tall, lean auburn-haired man cut through the restaurant in their wake until he caught up with them at a table in Mary’s section. He slid a palm over the woman’s lower back as he held out the chair for her, only moving away after she was seated and hadrewarded his gentlemanly behavior with a kiss that was slightly inappropriate for public consumption.
The pressure eased from my chest, and I sucked in a relieved breath.
Giselle Sinclair and her husband, Daniel Sinclair.
Sebastian’s sister, a renowned artist specializing in provocative paintings, and the French businessman who owned, among other properties, this very restaurant.
Sensing me, or perhaps noticing the woman standing still as a statue in the middle of the restaurant carrying one too many plates, Sebastian looked up from his seat at the table and directly locked eyes with me. I had the pleasure of watching warmth suffuse his features, his eyes the colour of the candlelight flickering atop each table.
I quirked a lopsided grin at him before slightly shrugging my shoulders to indicate the plates and hightailed it into the kitchen. It was steamy, too hot, and cacophonous, but it felt like an oasis after the tumult of feelings I had experienced in the dining room.
I had no right to be jealous of anyone Sebastian might date.
Not when I was ostensibly dating his ex-lover and best friend.
Not when he’d had the choice to date me for real and passed it up as if he had never been tempted.
“You okay, Lins?” one of the sous chefs asked as he carefully spooned fragrant butter over a steak in a sizzling pan a few feet from me.
I nodded and gave him a wan smile before heading back through the kitchen toward the locker room. My shirt smelled of seafood sauce and that particular greasy kind of smoke that came from spending too long near a working kitchen. The scent also permeated my thick hair, so I unwound it from its complicated Dutch braids and spritzed with some perfume frommy purse before switching out my uniform for the last time. I changed into a delicate white lace dress that hugged my curves until just above my knees where it flared slightly into a frothy hemline. It was one of the newest pieces I’d finished in the late hours of the night when I was too wired to sleep even though I was exhausted. I hadn’t created so many designs inyears, but being on Adam’s arm had inspired me.
I wanted to look good, not just for the paps but also for him.
Though, I had originally packed this dress to impress an entirely different man. Adam, who would be picking me up any minute for a date to celebrate my last night serving at Affaire.
I groaned and banged my head lightly against the locker door after I cleared it out.
Was I officially the greediest girl in existence for lusting after not just one gorgeous movie star but two? Was it beyond wild for me to think that maybe—just maybe—if I tread forward carefully, I could have them both?
Or, more correctly, we could all have each other?
Even if being with Adam and Sebastian was a pipe dream for me, I’d do what I could to bring them back into each other’s lives. Some people were meant to exist in each other’s orbit, and those two were a perfect example of that.
“Buonasera, trottolina mia.”
I closed my eyes as I huffed out a laugh.
“Great,” I muttered. “Now you’re hallucinating him.”
A smoky chuckle alerted me to the fact that I wasnot. When I twirled around, Seb stood in the doorway to the locker room, arms crossed over his chest as he casually leaned against the wall. There was a smug, mischievous grin on his face like a teenage boy who had found himself in the girls’ locker room.
“How did you get back here?” I asked, a little breathless with surprise and a surge of arousal.
His mouth ticked higher on one side as he pushed off the wall and strolled languidly toward me. My throat ticked dryly as I swallowed hard, frozen in place by the look in his eye as he stood too close and raised a hand to brush a wayward wave out of my face.
“I walked,” he teased softly.
“But why? You’re here with your family.”
“I am,” he agreed easily. “My sister and her family have moved nearby, and my mother is in town to help with the children while they get settled. It was my turn to pick the restaurant, and I found I didn’t want to waste another day without seeing you.”
“Sebastian,” I murmured, transfixed by his intensity, the way those golden eyes seemed to burn through to the core of me and light it all on fire. “What are you doing?”
“Being honest,” he said with a flippant shrug that was at odds with the way he stared at me. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Why now?” I asked. “When things are so complicated?”
He looked at the floor for a moment, shoving his hands in his pockets as if to restrain himself from reaching out to me. After a long pause, he looked back up at me through his thick black lashes, and his expression was ravaged.
