Page 11 of The Sebastian Guarantee
Phoebe studied the blond stunner, and an absolutely ludicrous notion popped into her head. A buzzy euphoria took hold. She glanced at the love-match hot dog, and for the second time in five minutes, she knew what she needed to do.
She tapped the rim of the martini glass and eyed the waiter. “Keep these coming. I’ve got a plan to flesh out, but I’ll need to be good and drunk to figure out a way to pull it off.”
Chapter3
SEBASTIAN
Ping, ping, ping!
Ping, ping, ping!
Sebastian Cress burrowed beneath the covers.
Ping, ping, ping!
He groaned. What the hell was making that racket? It wasn’t his cell. He knew that for sure. He’d turned the damned thing off yesterday before he’d boarded his flight from New York to Denver, and he hadn’t turned it back on.
That had been a conscious choice.
What hadn’t been a conscious choice was dropping it seconds before he’d quickly jumped into a cab outside Denver International Airport in the pouring rain to evade a gaggle of tittering fans. It had cracked down the center, but he’d pocketed the damaged device, then ordered the driver to hit the gas and get him the hell out of there.
He’d been in no mood to engage with the public. The minute he’d stepped off the plane, he’d caught a handful of people filming him. By the time he’d left the terminal, a dozen giggling young women wielding smartphones had followed him to the taxi line.
And why were members of the fairer sex trailing behind him like he was the Pied Piper?
A couple of months ago, an online publication dubbed him the sexiest man on the internet, and this fan club melee had become a staple in his life. At first, he’d basked in the adulation. It wasn’t like hehadn’tgone looking for attention. He was the one who’d shifted from posting exercise tutorials and healthy eating tips to flooding his socials with shirtless pictures of himself partying with a cast of women whose names weren’t worth remembering, along with a string of sweaty, bare-chested shots of him fresh out of the shower. Every image highlighted his muscled body and rock-hard abs. Legions of ladies had called him man candy. His DMs were chock-full of marriage proposals and requests to carry his child. For a spell, he welcomed the distraction. But his time cavorting around the globe like a pampered man-whore was over.
He scrubbed his hands down his face, tried to swallow, then groaned again. His mouth tasted like crap tequila, which wasn’t surprising. After he’d landed in a wet and stormy Denver, and before he’d headed to his parents’ house, he’d hit up a hole-in-the-wall bar near the airport and guzzled a ton of—that’s right—crap tequila.
Ping, ping, ping!
The incessant sound sliced through his brain like a buzz saw gnawing through a block of cheese. It was as if the noise was coming from beneath his pillow. Could he still be drunk? Why would his bed be pinging? He pushed onto his elbow and cracked his bloodshot eyes open. He glanced at his bedroom window, trying to get his bearings, but the curtains were closed. From the slim slice of light coming in, he could deduce that the sun was either setting or rising—most likely setting. It was no surprise he’d slept through the day. He’d arrived at the house at two a.m. and was relieved to find it empty. Had his father been home, the former heavyweight champion and British boxing sensation, Erasmus “The British Beast” Cress, would have scowled, then described his twenty-four-year-old son as a wobbly git. And the man would have been right. When the British Beast’s only son finally stumbled through the door in the wee hours of the morning, he’d clutched the railing and hauled his drunken ass upstairs before crashing face-first onto his bed.
Ping, ping, ping!
He shook his head, working to clear the cobwebs, when a few items on the bedside table caught his eye. A lump formed in his throat as he took in an old pocket watch, a smooth aquamarine stone, and a framed photo of the pint-sized version of himself. Dressed in a red and green Christmas sweater, he stood arm in arm with the people who had been his best friends since he was a kid: Aria Paige-Grant, Oscar Elliott, and Phoebe Gale. He allowed his gaze to linger on the little girl in braids with a hot dog in her hand, then returned his attention to the watch and the stone. A wave of shame that couldn’t be mistaken for nausea washed over him as he recalled the type of person he used to be.
Ping, ping, ping!
It was too early or too late—he still didn’t know which—to wax poetic over his poor choices.
Ping, ping, ping!
With his head ready to explode, he tossed the pillow onto the floor and spied the source of the sound. In the hazy light, he could barely believe his eyes. “Why is there a random cell phone here?” He blinked. It wasn’t only a cell phone. A wrinkled piece of folded paper withSebscribbled across the top sat next to the device. He picked it up, shook it open, and read the succinct message.
Answer me, Big Foot.
He recognized the handwriting and the insult that had become an inside joke. Despite a screaming headache, a grin stretched across his parched lips at the thought of his raven-haired eight-year-old little sister. How he adored Tula Meredith Cress.
Not long after he and Oscar turned sixteen, they’d become big brothers. Tula and Ivy Elliott entered this world a day apart, and it was safe to say the girls had their brothers wrapped around their fingers. The Big Foot reference came from a game they used to play when the girls were toddlers and loved comparing the size of their chubby feet to their big brothers’ honking hooves. But hiding a charged cell phone under his pillow that aggravated his already hellacious hangover was pushing the limits of his brotherly affection.
Ping, ping, ping!
He grabbed the device and answered the call. “Tula Cress,” he barked, “why is there a phone under my pillow?”
“Because,” came the eight-year-old’s sassy squeak of a voice, “I left it there, dingbat. Did you think a phone fairy put it there? News flash: there’s a tooth fairy and maybe a hot dog fairy because Phoebe told me she wanted to be a hot dog fairy when she was a kid. But I know for a fact there isn’t a smartphone fairy.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. At the mention of Phoebe, a perplexing tsunami of emotions hit. Over the last six months, she’d left him a mountain of messages. But he couldn’t muster the strength—or perhaps it was that he couldn’t muster the courage—to have more than a fleeting conversation or a generic text exchange with his best friend.
