Happily Letter After by Vi Keeland

CHAPTER 9

SADIE

Number of times per week you enjoy coitus.

I chewed the end of my pen while I mulled over yet another tough question. That really depends, doesn’t it? I mean, is he good and gets me to my happy place before crossing the finish line himself? I had to assume that, since I was seeking my ideal mate, they were asking about how things would be with him and not some three-pump chump. My mind wandered to Sebastian. That man had a definite edge to him. There was no way he wouldn’t deliver the goods.

I sighed. I’d decided to take advantage of my free matchmaking trial to get my mind off Sebastian Maxwell. Yet he seemed to pop into my head as I pondered every intrusive question.

Describe your ideal mate’s physical appearance.

I closed my eyes and thought about what type of man I was attracted to, then jotted down the description that came to mind. Tall, broad-shouldered, green eyes, chiseled jaw, strong forearms, and a wide alpha-male stance. Good God. The only thing missing were the gold flecks in Sebastian’s eyes. I really needed to hop off the Maxwell train.

Preferred primary residence location.

Duh. A brownstone on the Upper West Side, of course. Though, in my defense, I would’ve answered that one the same even before meeting a certain someone.

What song did you last sing in private?

Oh jeez. I might have to lie about this one. I’d been feeling a little down this morning, so before I went in the shower, I cranked up an oldie but goodie and twerked to Sir Mix-a-Lot while I shampooed my hair. I was pretty certain we all liked big butts, but it didn’t make a very appealing match profile. So I went with something a little more mature—Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” and then wasted time thinking about what type of music Sebastian might like. For some reason, I pegged him as a country fan—all those songs about lost women and dogs seemed to fit him. Though, oddly, I got the distinct feeling that Sebastian would be more intrigued by a woman who sang Sir Mix-a-Lot rather than Lewis Capaldi.

Complete this sentence: I wish I had someone with whom I could share . . .

My immediate response was to write everything. But I thought that might make me sound too needy. So I toned it down a little, yet still went with something that was true and had a bit more personality sprinkled in: cold pasta and laughs at two am.

The clickety-clack sound of a woman’s heels alerted me that Devin was coming down the hall, so I quickly hid the matchmaker questionnaire under some papers.

“Coffee time.” She breezed into my office. “You want the usual?”

“Yeah. That would be great. I’m really dragging this afternoon.”

“Oh? Do anything interesting last night?”

Since I didn’t categorize watching dog-training videos as interesting, I shook my head. “Nah. Just woke up early and couldn’t fall back asleep.”

Devin looked down at my desk. “What are you working on?”

“Copyedits for next month’s articles.”

“Mm-hmm.” She squinted at me. “Okay . . . well. It’s my turn to pay for coffee, so I’ll be back in a jiff.”

“Sounds good, thanks.”

Devin turned toward the door and then back to me. “Actually . . . I forgot my wallet. Can I borrow twenty dollars?”

“Yeah, sure.” I got out of my chair and walked over to the cabinet under the window where I kept my purse. As soon as I dug in to find my wallet, Devin snatched the pile of papers from atop my desk.

My eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Copyedits my ass.” She started to riffle through the papers in her hands. I attempted to grab them, but she pulled back too quickly for me.

“Give me that!”

She dug a few pages down into the pile and then yanked out a page. “Aha! I knew you were doing something you didn’t want me to see.”

“You’re crazy.”

She started to read the paper aloud. “Bloom Matchmaking Services. Boutique services for elite singles.” Devin rolled her eyes. “Let me translate. ‘Boutique’ equals ‘expensive.’ ‘Elite singles’ equals ‘a bunch of stuffy assholes who think they’re too good for Match.com or the bar scene.’”

“It’s research for an article.”

“So why did you just lie to me and tell me you were working on copyedits?”

“Because of exactly what you’re doing at this very moment. You blow everything out of proportion.”

Devin was too busy scanning the sheet for clues to even hear my defense. She smirked when she looked up. “The description of your ideal mate sounds very familiar.”

“I’ve always liked tall with dark hair.”

She arched a brow. “With good bone structure, green eyes, and a wide stance?”

“Who doesn’t like that?”

“Uh-huh. So you weren’t describing Sebastian Maxwell on this form?”

“Absolutely not.”

She flipped over the page and looked at the questions I’d answered earlier this morning. “How many children does your ideal mate have? Zero to one? Since when are you in the market for a single dad? This is the first time I’ve heard about this.”

I grabbed the papers out of her hands. “Don’t you have a job to do? Or coffee to mainline into your vein or something?”

“You need to just ask him out and you know it.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I need to do. Because the foundation of any good relationship starts off with a series of lies about . . . let’s see . . . my name, occupation, and relationship with his only child. It was obviously meant to be. We’ll probably be married by Christmas.”

Devin sighed. “Why don’t you just come clean, then? Tell him the truth.”

“And then what? Ask him out on a date?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

“Because he’ll go ballistic on me if he finds out. He bought an unruly Great Dane that is driving him crazy because his daughter suddenly became convinced her dead mother was mad at her for something she’d done. That was all my fault, Devin. I made a child think Santa Claus had a direct line to a dead woman.”

“But you meant well.”

“I’m sure Sebastian Maxwell won’t see it that way.”

“Well, you’ll never know unless you tell him, will you?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I could really use that coffee.”

Devin nodded. “Fine. I’m going. But think about it, Sadie. There’re eight million people in this little city of ours and somehow you wound up meeting this guy. Maybe it started out wrong, but maybe there’s a reason you two met.”

After Devin left, I crumpled up the matchmaking application I’d been filling out. The truth of the matter was, I had no desire to go on any date. Devin was right. I had a real thing for Sebastian. And it wasn’t just that he was ridiculously handsome. He had a soft side that he reserved for his daughter. I was certain that his wife had been privy to that side of him, too. There was something just so beautiful about a man who saved the best parts of himself for the women in his life. I knew . . . because he reminded me of another man I adored. God, Freud would have a damn field day with me.

I decided to come clean. Shockingly, Devin had been right. Since the very first letter from Birdie, something had felt like kismet. Like I was supposed to meet her and her father for a reason. Of course, it helped that once I did, the man was insanely handsome. But a part of me truly felt like even if Sebastian Maxwell hadn’t turned out to be gorgeous, I’d still be drawn to him. My attraction went deeper than the surface. I was also well aware that I was bringing parts of my own history into my fascination with his little family—but isn’t that how life works? Our hearts are made up of all different broken pieces that belong to others, and when we find the right one, they show us how they can all fit together again.

Maybe I was reaching too far and being too philosophical, but the bottom line was . . . I’d run the dating gauntlet enough times to know that when someone comes along and makes you feel butterflies, you need to chase them. Because it doesn’t happen very often.

So I decided that after today’s training session, I was going to ask Sebastian to speak to him privately and then come clean. Chances are he’d freak out and never want to see me again. But at this point, I couldn’t keep up the lies anymore. It wasn’t fair to me, or to him and his daughter. And if there was a shot in hell that maybe something could happen between us, I couldn’t have that built on a foundation of lies.

My palms started to sweat as I got closer to the Maxwell brownstone. I was so damn nervous. A part of me hoped that Sebastian wouldn’t be around today, just so I could delay going through with it. Last time I’d trained Marmaduke, only Magdalene and Birdie had been home. When I arrived at the house, I took a deep breath and prayed that was the case today.

The walk up the stairs to the front door felt a lot like walking the plank. I shook out my tingling hands and then forced myself to knock. A few seconds later, I saw shadows on the other side and held my breath as the handle started to turn.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Magdalene.

“Mr. . . . umm . . . Sebastian . . . I didn’t expect you to answer the door.”

He folded his arms across his chest and squinted at me. “No? Why is that, Sadie?”

Was it me or did he just say my name weird? Or maybe my nerves were getting the best of me. Picking imaginary lint off my pants to avoid his intense stare, I cleared my throat. “I . . . uhh . . . thought you’d be at work. Last time I came on this day, Magdalene was here.”

His mouth slid to a wicked smile. “I took the afternoon off. Thought you and I could have a little training session. Just the two of us.”

A giant lump formed in my throat. Shit. Now I had no choice but to come clean. I’d left it up to fate, and fate couldn’t smack me in the face more than it was doing right now. This man who worked six days a week had miraculously taken the day off to spend time with me. Alone. “Umm. Okay. That’s good.”

He stepped back, opening the door wide. “Come in. I’d like to start the training inside today, if that’s alright with you.”

It wasn’t. Not at all. Stepping over the threshold made me feel claustrophobic. At least being outside, I had a place to run. The door suddenly slammed closed behind me and I jumped.

Sebastian flashed another wicked smile. “Sorry. Slipped.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was intentionally making me feel on edge.

Luckily, Marmaduke came to my rescue. He charged at me and nearly knocked me over in an attempt to lick my face. “Hey, boy.” I scratched behind his ears. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

When I looked up, I found Sebastian’s eyes searing into me. He held a folded sheet of white paper in his hand that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Where did you say you got your training from again?”

Uh.I hadn’t that I remembered. Looking around the room, I felt a panic come over me. I could have just ripped off the Band-Aid and come clean right then, but my heart was racing out of control, and I just wasn’t ready. So what did I do? Of course, I dug myself deeper. The hallway we were standing in had a large round table. On top of it was a set of keys. “I went to the Key Training School.”

“The Key Training School . . .”

He glanced at the keys on the table and back to me with narrowed eyes. “Where is that located exactly?”

“Umm . . . downtown.”

“I’ll have to look them up. See if they have a comments section so that I can give you a good review. Is it K-E-Y Training?”

Shit.“Yes . . . but they’re closed now.”

“Closed today or closed for good?”

“For good.”

“That’s a shame. Since they clearly produced such a qualified dog trainer.”

What the hell? Was he mocking me? We’d ended on such a nice note after I’d saved his dog’s life, and now suddenly I felt like we were back to square one.

He tilted his head. “Why did they close?”

“Umm. I think because the rent is so high in the city.”

He squinted so tightly that I could barely see the whites of his eyes. Then, without another word, he turned his back to me and started to walk into the living room. “Follow me.”

Like a puppy, I trailed behind. Marmaduke had walked ahead and was busy doing something in the corner. Sebastian turned to me and pointed to the dog. “This is new. Perhaps we can start today’s session with you demonstrating how to stop my dog from doing that to my daughter’s stuffed animals.”

Leaning in for a closer look, I saw that the giant animal was humping a stuffed turtle. Ugh. His lipstick was out and everything. I scrunched up my nose. “He’s humping a turtle.”

“Is that what he’s doing? I wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps you get a lot more practice than I do.”

My eyes widened. Did he just call me a whore? I blinked a few times. “Excuse me?”

“Well, you told my daughter that you write about your dating life for a living. So naturally I assume that means you go out with a wide variety of men.”

I was getting more pissed off by the minute. I might be a liar, but I was certainly not promiscuous. My hands gripped my hips. “Just because I date a lot doesn’t mean I’m off humping anything I can get my hands on like your dog. Perhaps you should look inward—maybe your dog gets his hobbies from his master. What exactly is your dating life like?”

Sebastian practically snarled at me. Screw this. I snarled right back.

My attention was again distracted when Marmaduke started to really go to town. While before, he had been gently gyrating his hips in a haphazard motion, now he was pumping away like a man on a mission. Or a dog. A dog on a mission, I meant. I yelled at him. “Marmaduke. No!”

Shockingly, the big dog froze. He stood there midpump, looking like he hadn’t even realized anyone was watching, and now he’d been caught red-handed. While he was flustered, I marched over and slipped the stuffed turtle from beneath him. Ugh. It was . . . wet. I didn’t even want to know what type of canine bodily fluids I was touching. I held the tail between two fingers and looked at Sebastian. “Where is your washing machine?”

“The laundry room is off the kitchen.”

I knew which way that was, so I helped myself. I walked the offending turtle to the kitchen and opened a bunch of doors until I found the one that contained a small laundry room. Lifting the top of the washer, I tossed the plush toy inside and turned to Sebastian, who was watching from the doorway.

“What else is he humping?”

“A few of my daughter’s other stuffed animals.”

“Go get them.”

Sebastian disappeared and came back with three more small plush toys. He handed them to me, and I tossed them all into the washer. “Do you have any vinegar?”

His brows furrowed. “I think so.”

“Go get it.”

Once again, he surprised me by doing as I instructed without question. When he returned, I had the washing machine filling up with water, and I added two capfuls of the vinegar. “Puppies don’t reach puberty until six to eight months, so he isn’t humping for sexual pleasure. It’s usually just a playful game they find out is fun for them. Animals tend to pick things that smell good. A little vinegar in the wash might do the trick to stop him.”

Thankfully, I’d been reading a lot and stumbled on an article on humping. For a minute there, I almost sounded like I knew what the hell I was talking about.

Sebastian nodded, seemingly knocked down off whatever high horse he’d been on when I arrived. I brushed past him to exit the laundry room and went back to the living room to find Marmaduke sitting. It looked like he was waiting for me to return.

“You said you wanted to do some indoor training today. But I think it’s best if I take him for a walk before we attempt that. He has a lot of energy and follows commands best when he’s a bit tired.”

“Fine. I’ll join you.”

I held up a hand and showed him my palm. “I prefer to go alone.” Not wanting to tell him I needed a minute to gather my wits, I pulled yet another bullshit lie out of my ass. “It’s bonding time for me as Marmaduke’s trainer.”

Sebastian’s eyes roamed my face, as if he was debating what I’d said. Eventually, he gave a curt nod. “Fine. I’ll wait here.”

You know how you’re calm during the seconds of a narrowly averted disaster, only for your heart to start pumping like crazy after the situation is under control again? That’s exactly what I felt like as I walked down the front stairs of the Maxwell residence with Marmaduke. My legs shook with each step, and I had to gulp a few mouthfuls of air in order to catch my breath. What the hell had gone on in there? I replayed the last ten minutes over in my head—the mocking way Sebastian had spoken to me, how he’d seemed to challenge every word that came out of my mouth, the way he’d questioned my dating habits. But by the time I’d walked around the block a few times, I’d calmed down and convinced myself that my own guilt had me reading into things that hadn’t really been there. It was like the telltale heart beating under the floorboards—with every minute I was in Sebastian’s presence, I heard the thumping louder, and it had started to feel like the room was closing in on me. But really, there had been no beating heart under the floor. The entire crazy encounter had been a figment of my imagination.

Yeah, that was it. It had to be. I mean, sure, Sebastian was a tough nut. But he had no idea who I really was. If he did, he would have called me out on it immediately. So it had to be all in my head.

Twenty minutes later, I finally garnered the courage to walk back to the house. I took a deep breath and lifted my hand to knock, but the door swung open before my knuckles could connect with the wood.

“It’s about time.”

“Marmaduke had a lot of energy today.”

“I was beginning to think you were going to take off with my dog.”

I sort of laughed at that notion. Who the hell in their right mind would take off with this out-of-control animal? Only a person who was nuts, obviously. Oh. Wait. Maybe I did qualify, then. I guess I could see his point. “Sorry. I’ll stay a bit longer so you get your full hour of training time, if you’d like.”

Sebastian stepped aside, and I noticed that he again had a folded-up piece of white paper in his hand. Only this time, I wasn’t going to let my imagination get the best of me by thinking whatever it was contained some ominous evil thing to expose me as a fraud. So I lifted my chin high and ignored his hand as I walked inside.

Back in the living room, I felt Sebastian’s presence all around me. It was uncomfortable yet oddly arousing at the same time. I cleared my throat. “Is there something specific you wanted to work on today?”

He watched me intently. “Yes. Jumping over people.”

My brows drew together. “Excuse me?”

“Your website said it’s one of the tricks that you teach. I thought my daughter might enjoy that type of thing, so I’d like you to teach the dog how to jump over people while they’re down on all fours.”

“You want me to teach Marmaduke how to jump over people who are down on all fours?”

Sebastian looked around. “Is there an echo in here?”

“No. But I just . . . It seems like a better use of our training time might be spent teaching Marmaduke some basic commands. Not something so . . . advanced.”

“Are you not capable of teaching him an advanced trick?”

Uh . . . no . . . I hadn’t gotten that far on YouTube yet.“Of course I am.”

Sebastian flashed a cynical smile and sat down on the couch. He stretched both of his arms out across the top and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table in front of him. “Good. Now down on all fours, Ms. Schmidt.”

“Schmidt?”

“Oh, is that not your real last name? Your website said Gretchen Schmidt. But yet you told my daughter your real name is Sadie? So what is it now? Are you Sadie Schmidt, or is there yet another name?”

I started to feel my cheeks heat. “Umm. No, it’s Schmidt. Like I told your daughter, I just use Gretchen for work purposes.”

“Right. Because it sounds more German.”

“That’s right.”

“Alright then, Ms. Schmidt. Why don’t you get started? What’s the German word for ‘jump’?”

Oh God.I totally panicked and said the first jumbled syllables that I could force out of my mouth. “Flunkerbsht.”

Sebastian’s brows jumped. “Flunkerbsht.”

“That’s right.”

I could have sworn I detected a hint of a smile at the edges of his lips. But then it quickly disappeared. “Ready whenever you are . . . flunkerbsht.”