And who knows how long they might have stood there, gazes dueling, heat and awareness crackling, if Cody hadn’t returned with Harm just then?
“Got ’im. At least he’s not muddy anymore.” Cody looked hopefully at Neely, then his gaze went straight to Sebastian.
Neely went in and took the dog by the collar. “Thanks,” she said to Cody. But he barely seemed to notice her. He was craning his neck to see past her toward the man still dripping on the deck.
“Who’s he?” he asked.
“A man I work with.”
“Your new neighbor,” Sebastian said firmly, coming in the door.
Cody’s eyes widened and he looked a bit worried as he turned for confirmation to Neely. “Really? Where d’you live?”
“Here.”
That did make Cody’s eyes bug. “With Neely?”
“No!” they both said in unison.
“I’m not moving,” Neely said flatly.
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
Cody looked from one to the other nervously. “I got homework,” he said. “Math. Lots of it. Gotta go.” And he darted out the door before either of them could say a word.
In the silence that followed his departure, Harm shook himself vigorously, getting Neely almost as wet as Sebastian. She hauled the dog into the kitchen and began to dry him.
Sebastian came after her, loomed over her, still dripping. “I’m not leaving,” he told her.
Neely looked up and met his stony gaze. “Neither am I.”
“I own this boat.”
She took a careful breath. “And I have a lease to rent a room on it for the next six months.”
“I made you an offer of a better place to stay.”
“Oh, sure. With a dog and five kittens, two rabbits and a guinea pig?”
His jaw tightened. He glared.
Neely shrugged. “I’m staying, Mr. Savas. And if you don’t like it, that’s tough.”
“THAT,” Neely said when Frank opened the door to Cath’s apartment the next morning, “was low.”
She had been fuming all night, pacing and prowling. But only in her room, because Sebastian Savas had taken over. He’d come down from his shower, all clean and pressed looking and set up his computer on the desk by the window.
“My desk?” he’d asked with one raised brow.
“Your desk,” Neely had replied through her teeth.
And so he’d set to work in the living room. And she’d gone upstairs to fume because she certainly had no intention of betraying how upset she was to her new landlord.
She had no qualms about telling Frank exactly how she felt, though. “Really low. Sneaky, in fact,” she said now.
The look on Frank’s face said that he would have shut the door on her and bolted it fast if he thought he could get away with it.
He couldn’t. She’d have ripped it off its hinges to tell him her opinion of what he’d done.
“Um, hi, Neely. I, er…good morning.” He peered at her from behind the door as if it were a shield. As far as Neely was concerned, he needed one.
“Good, Frank?” She raised a brow. “Not exactly.” And determinedly she strode straight past the door, backing him into the living room and flinging the door shut behind her.
“Just a minute. Hang on now—” Frank was backpedaling and glancing behind him, as if to see if the window was open and might provide an escape route, no matter that they were on the third floor.
“Don’t even think it,” Neely warned. “If I want you to go out the window, I’ll push you.”
Frank almost managed a grin at that—as if she were kidding. “Aw, come on, Neel’, you know I wouldn’t have done it if the loan hadn’t fallen through.”
Neely did know it, but it didn’t make her any happier. She gritted her teeth.
Frank shrugged helplessly. “I know you’re mad. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t help it. It just…happened.”
“You didn’t tell me! You could at least have told me!”
“About Savas?” He looked appalled, as if doing that was more than his life was worth.
Neely shook her head. “About my financing falling through! I shouldn’t have had to find it out from Sebastian Savas walking through my front door and telling me he’d bought my houseboat! Your dear friend Greg should have told me.”
Frank cursed under his breath. Then he raked his fingers through his hair. “He tried to. Honest to God,” he insisted. “He didn’t call me until late. Said he couldn’t get hold of you. He tried your cell phone. And he didn’t want to leave it as a message. So when he couldn’t get you, he called me. Thought you might be at the office. But—” Frank spread his hands “—you weren’t.”
No. She hadn’t been.
Because she’d gone sailing with Max.
He’d called her the night before and said he was thinking of buying a sailboat, that he wanted to take it out on Friday, would she come along.
She’d been stunned—and torn. “Friday? It’s a workday.”
“Take it off.”
“But—what would my boss say?” she’d asked him, only half-joking.
Max laughed. “Guess.” But then the laughter died, and he said gravely, “He’d say you were doing him a favor, getting him out. Making up for lost time.”
And there had been a ragged edge to his voice that spoke of a depth of feeling that she couldn’t ignore. And as it was exactly the sort of “carpe diem” philosophy she’d preached at him more than once, how could she argue?
Still she hadn’t given in at once. “You’re sure?” she’d pressed him.
“Well, I’m going,” he’d said firmly. “Whether you come or not—that’s up to you. I’d like you to,” he’d added. “The question is, can you spare the time?”
Which meant he was still Max. The leopard hadn’t changed his spots entirely. He might not be Max Grosvenor, the 100-proof workaholic that he’d been when she’d first walked into his office seven months ago, but there was still a lot of the old Max Grosvenor inside him. And that was good, not bad.
He just needed balance in his life. By asking her if she had time, at least it showed he was learning how to weigh choices instead of always opting for work.
“I can spare a part of the day,” Neely decided. “But I need to be back by three.”
“Deal,” Max had said.
So she’d met him at the boatyard at nine—and she had been sailing on the Sound with Max while her financing was falling through yesterday afternoon.
She swallowed and accepted it. “Right.” she said to Frank now, squaring her shoulders. “My fault.”
Frank patted her on the arm. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Really. And, um, I just…didn’t know how to tell you about Savas.”
This