A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (48 page)

“Thanks—but I can get it,” he answered with a smile, moving over to her. He set the roses on the counter, and her throat tightened as he started to move closer. “You go sit down. Even if it’s just cereal, I want to make you breakfast, okay?”

“Really, Kevin, it’s fine—besides, you don’t know where anything is in my kitchen. It would just take more time.” She tried to position herself between where Sebastian crouched and where Kevin was approaching, where he could see into her kitchen, really hoping she could get through this without an altercation. Tobin needed to get through this without an argument, but that was becoming increasingly unlikely with every second.

“I’m sure I’d manage,” he said with a laugh, trying to reach around her for the refrigerator handle, probably trying to get the milk out. “You deserve someone taking care of you, Tobin. Your dad just got out of the hospital, your friend was… I get that you kinda just want to be by yourself right now, but just give me a few minutes. Who knows, it might be the best bowl of cereal you—” Tobin bit the inside of her cheek.

He’d managed to get the door open, and she had had to move slightly to avoid her legs getting banged by it. And that was when she knew that the jig was up, because Kevin’s eyes dropped from hers for a moment, and he saw the other guy hiding in her apartment. Behind her, she could hear Sebastian sigh, and then stand. Kevin was staring at him in complete silence for a long, long moment.

“Who’s this?” he asked at last, quietly.

“A friend,” Tobin answered without hesitation. “He’s been… helping me out, a bit.”

“A friend,” Kevin repeated. The disbelief in his voice was almost a physical blow, and she looked away from him.

She could hear Sebastian shifting uncomfortably, probably adjusting his towel, before he was reaching out to offer his hand to the other. “Sean. Nice to meet you,” he said as congenially as possible. Kevin didn’t reach out to take his hand.

“A friend. Who feels the need to hide in your kitchen when another guy walks in.” Tobin moved away from him quickly, peeling off her jacket and tossing it on the couch. Oliver was still waiting expectantly by his food bowl.

“To be fair,” Sebastian interjected, trying to keep his tone light, “I am wearing nothing but a towel. I think I’m entitled not to want to be seen wearing only that.”

“And then there’s that,” Kevin answered sourly.

“He was taking a shower, Kevin,” Tobin told him, turning around and crossing her arms over her stomach. “What else do you expect?”

“It’s one thing to be taking a shower and another entirely to be walking around a girl’s apartment in only a towel! Unless there’s something going on between him and the girl and I’ve just wandered in on something I probably shouldn’t have.” Kevin’s voice was getting angrier, and her throat tightened, looking away again.

Sebastian had knelt back down and was pulling out the dog food from under the sink. He scooped up a bunch with the cup that was inside the bag before hearing Kevin’s words. Then he straightened, his eyes narrowed. “Kevin—yeah, Tobin’s told me about you, actually,” he started with an edge of danger in his voice. “I’m not sure why it matters if something’s going on between me and her, to you. You’ve only gone out on one date with her. You aren’t exactly in a committed relationship.”

“Sean,” Tobin started, forcing herself to remember to use the name he’d just made up off the top of his head.

“No, no, he’s right,” Kevin interrupted, glaring back at Sebastian. There was no doubt at all which of them was taller, bigger—stronger. Which would have been pointed enough without the fact that Sebastian wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Who am I to come in and expect a bit of courtesy, that a woman I’ve expressed interest in seeing again hasn’t been seeing some other guy on the side?”

“It isn’t like that,” she tried to answer, hating how her voice broke slightly in the middle.

“Then what is it like, Tobin? Am I missing something about all of this? Or is it exactly like it seems, and this guy has been over here, hooking up with you—”

“Hooking up with me?” she demanded, her eyes flashing with sudden fury. “What, like I’m some corner prostitute who will take home any guy for a couple of bucks? He’s a friend, Kevin! He’s been helping me since everything happened, and if you can’t respect that, fine. Fine! I thought you were some nice guy, not just another jackass I can do without.”

“He’s why you didn’t want me up here, isn’t he?” Kevin continued, ignoring what she had said entirely, even for her growing outrage. “Why you thought of every excuse you could to try and keep me from coming up?”

“Yes,” she admitted, exasperated, “he is definitely why I didn’t want you up here—because I knew you’d blow it out of proportion and—”

“And what? Or are you just like every other city girl I’ve met, Tobin? Moving between guys like it means nothing?”

“Hey, back off!” Sebastian finally spoke, almost yelling as he shoved at Kevin’s chest. “Is this how you’re going to behave right now, really? You’re gonna come in here like a self-righteous prick thinking he has any right to a girl just because he happened to show interest in her a few times?” Oh, there wasn’t any hypocrisy in that, Tobin thought to herself with a groan. Surely, he felt it too, but he went on anyway. “Meanwhile, she has just been through a trauma, she lost her best friend—it matters to you all that much that she might’ve had sex with another guy? Who are you to dictate that?”

Sebastian’s words did actually seem to stop Kevin for a second, unaware as he was of the blatant hypocrisy, and he looked back at Tobin, his gaze intent. “Alright, fine. Fine, you are going through a lot right now, this is probably just your way of coping with it—I can accept that, I am a doctor after all. But Tobin, despite the fact that we’ve only been on one date, I actually thought we had a connection. I thought we had something… a bit realer than just hooking up every once in a while when something major happens, you know?”

Her throat tightened. “I can’t answer that truthfully, Kevin. I can’t, I don’t know a girl who could! It has only been one date, and it was a good date, a fun date, but it was just one date. And I have so many more important things going on my life right now than that, so I just… I need time to figure things out.”

“Yeah, well, I need an answer right now,” he replied, callousness still in his voice in spite of being reminded of the other ways her life was imploding. “I need to know that a girl I’m interested in is putting the same amount of interest into a relationship, even this early. I think I’m owed at least that much when I try really hard to be better than the jackasses in this city and how I’ve seen them treat girls.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re better than the jackasses alright,” Sebastian interrupted with a snort. “You’re so much better, right up until the point where things aren’t going your way. Absolutely the nice guy until you realize that your country charm and medical degree might not be enough to keep a girl’s interest, right?”

Kevin whirled on Sebastian, knocking the dog food out of his hand; Tobin yelped and drew back. “And who the hell are you that you can keep her interest at all—Sean, was it? You got a great set of abs, I’ll give you that, but if we’re going off our resumes here, I’m going to guess that it’s just because the sex is kinda decent.”

“Stop it, both of you!” she tried to interject, starting to move closer and put herself between them.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Sebastian growled, his brown eyes flashing dangerously. “And you don’t know anything about why Tobin is interested in me. But if you need exclusivity so badly, to make yourself fell just a bit better, to compensate for a few things, I’m guessing, then look elsewhere for a girl to agree with everything you say. If you actually cared about her, then the fact that she’s argumentative and stubborn would be one of the things that you liked best about her!”

Kevin gritted his teeth, but then he turned back to glower at Tobin, who was trying to pull the two of them apart. He shook her off, and she stumbled into the counter, her heart pounding wildly. “I need an answer, Tobin,” he told her angrily. “If you want to see me again, if you want anything to do with me again—then this guy needs not to come around here again.”

She felt her heart plunge into her stomach, her ears ringing. She couldn’t send Sebastian away—she couldn’t send Sebastian away! He… he was protecting her! He was the only person who knew everything else that was going on and he was making sure she was safe—he was making sure Capozzi and his guys didn’t come and kill her like they had Kate.

And it was… it was more than that, she suddenly acknowledged to herself. She did like Kevin—he had seemed like a really nice, sweet guy. A gentleman, which was, sad to say, very new for her, a habit which Sebastian only perpetuated. But as she stared at him, wishing this moment had never happened, she realized that it wasn’t just because he was protecting her that she wanted Sebastian to stay around. She hadn’t even told Kevin why any of this had happened; she had been planning to keep it a secret from him forever. Wasn’t that a great foundation to a relationship, if she had even lived long enough to enjoy it? No, she wanted Sebastian to stay around. To be the one whose arms she slept in. And who nuzzled into her hair and whose stubble scraped at her jaw in a way that was caught between really irritating and absolutely perfect. Her throat tightened as she realized it. There had never been a contest, had there?

“Tobin!” Kevin’s furious voice interrupted her thoughts, and she drew in a deep, shuddering breath, blinking back a fresh wave of tears.

“U-uhm… uhm, no,” she started at last, stumbling through the words she had only just realized she needed to say. “No, I won’t promise you that, but… but not for whatever reason you’re going to tell yourself later, Kevin. When all of this started, with it happening like this, I… I didn’t want to talk to you. I didn’t want to talk to you at all—but I wanted to talk to him. I wanted him here, not you.” She could feel Sebastian stiffen behind her, but she tried not to focus on that. Kevin’s face was livid, almost purple with rage as he stared at her. Sebastian had been right all along; he might’ve been a nice guy, but he wasn’t… the right guy. Not at all. All of this proved that. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the way things are. I don’t think there’s anything else to it.”

For a long moment, Kevin stood there, his gaze shifting back and forth between her and Sebastian, before he sneered and snatched his roses off the counter. “You’re an idiot,” he hissed at her. “Choosing this… this muscle-bound jerk instead of me? Fine—fine! Good luck living out of a shoebox. That’s all you’ll get with him!” He stormed toward the door, slamming it behind him as he left. She could hear him stomping all the way downstairs to the front door of her apartment, and then it finally got quiet.

Oliver was at their feet eating the food that had fallen on the floor. Neither of them moved—and when finally one of them did, it was Sebastian, carefully stepping over the dog and turning to face her. He caught her hands gently and drew her away from the kitchen, his brown eyes cautious and concerned and yet hopeful.

“Did you mean that?” he asked softly at last, drawing her into his arms. Tobin folded herself against his chest, her hands resting on his bare skin. “You wanted me here—you want me here? You would rather have me over him?”

She swallowed hard, then nodded, shutting her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. It… it took him forcing me to say it, but ever since what happened, whenever I thought about Kevin, it was just about… keeping him as uninvolved as possible, keeping him away from all of this. I thought it was because I wanted to protect him from getting hurt too. But really it was just because I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to take his calls, I wasn’t happy to see him outside this morning—I didn’t want him here.”

He could probably see the turmoil in her eyes, and so the smile that touched his lips was small, and he was leaning forward to kiss her cheek. “I wish it hadn’t happened that way, but I’m glad, Tobin. I can’t imagine someone else, after having met you. I’m really glad.” Sebastian leaned forward, resting his forehead against her own and closing his own eyes.

She took a deep breath and allowed herself to breathe as he held her, calming herself down slowly, until her heart was no longer threatening to burst forth. That had been practically as stressful as everything else, she thought sardonically to herself.

“Soo,” Sebastian started with a mischievous note in his voice. “About that first date you promised me?”

Tobin groaned slightly.

The sudden, deafening sound of a hand connecting with her cheek stunned her, and she yelped as she was whipped to the side, her shoulder slamming into the metal frame of the chair. Stars danced before her eyes, making her completely dizzy, and she could hear Sebastian shouting furiously, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Tobin’s breath was ragged as she turned her head slowly back about, the taste of something metallic in her mouth that slowly dawned on her as being blood. Her blood. She pressed her lips together and opened them again, coughing as she leaned over her lap and saw the redness spatter onto the cement between her feet. For a long moment, she sat there, too stunned to do anything else as Sebastian fought furiously and the brutes who had been torturing him tried to subdue him.

“Okay, ground rule number one: we are not having sex in a bathroom stall.”

Sebastian’s attempt at a straight face ended there, and he was quickly pulling away the glass of wine he held and trying to keep it from spurting out through his nose. Tobin glowered at him and folded her arms over her chest, waiting impatiently for him to regain his composure. He didn’t seem like he was in any hurry to regain said composure, though, coughing into his fist with his brown eyes glittering mischievously over his knuckles at her.

“I think we already bit that bullet,” he pointed out with a smirk. “Although technically, I guess what we did in your shower the other night wasn’t really—”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough of that. I’m serious, though, you are not following me into the lady’s restroom and… and…” She was perfectly aware of the fact that they had already had sex, multiple times, as a matter of fact, but her cheeks still colored with embarrassment as a waiter walked past their table. Tobin couldn’t tell if he had overheard them or not, but she was really rather hoping he hadn’t.