“She’s got a point,” security said, shooting us a wave as we exited onto a busy sidewalk. I followed Sebastian as he turned right, leading us through the first wave of a weekday lunch rush. It wouldn’t be long until lines curved around food carts and strangers ate on shared benches. I balled my hands into fists to keep from taking Bruno’s leash back amidst all the activity. Aside from him taking off after a bitch, a squirrel, or a UPS truck—he detested anyone who delivered mail—I worried about him getting too excited. It wasn’t good for his heart, which was why I ensured he was rarely alone.
“Thanks for your help with the mess upstairs,” I said. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”
Sebastian stopped to let Bruno sniff a tree trunk. “You mean . . . clean?”
“Don’t you have a housekeeper?”
“Fuck no,” he said with enough vehemence that I wondered if I’d hit a sore spot. “And I never will.”
“I just can’t picture you on your hands and knees scrubbing down your Fifth Avenue bachelor pad. Or is it simply that you researched a How-To on caring for a date who boozes too hard?”
“If you must know,” he said, “I wasn’t raised the smooth-talking, bespoke-suit-wearing gentleman you’re acquainted with.”
Surely, he was messing with me, because that didn’t add up. Sebastian held himself with the poise of someone who’d grown up with Emily Post spines in the study, cotillion during the week, and an assurance that he’d never spend a night without a roof over his head. “But you went to Harvard and ‘summered’ on Nantucket as a kid.”
“You know where I went to school, how I spent my summers, and the location of my apartment?” He rolled his wrist to wrap the leash around it. “What are you, some kind of stalker?”
“No,” I said defensively, except that one night after a bottle of wine, a futile hour on Tinder, and a particularly combative workday with Sebastian, I had maybe succumbed to some stalker-like activities that went beyond what I’d needed to know for the job. “I did some research. Know thy enemy and all that.”
“Enemy, huh?” Bruno tugged on his leash to get to a discarded takeout carton, but Sebastian pulled him forward. “What happened to getting to know your team so you could therapize us?”
Damn. That would’ve been a much more rational explanation. “You say therapize like I’m trying to lure you into a dark alley and rob you blind.” I checked my hair in the reflection of a store window. “That could be what I’m doing for all you know, seeing as you have yet to schedule one-on-one time with me.”
“Aha,” he said. “I see what you’re up to now. You planned this to get me into a Georgina Keller therapy session.”
“You think I made my own dog throw up?”
“I don’t know what you’re capable of.”
Bruno stopped to poop, and Sebastian cleaned it up before I could even offer. “You’re derailing the topic,” I said.
He tied the plastic bag. “Which is?”
“Me trying to reconcile your past with your present.”
“I’ll tell you one thing as long as you keep it between us.” We turned a corner. “I never ‘summered’ anywhere, and my extensive cleaning knowledge is thanks to generations of Mexican matriarchs.”
So he was Latino as Luciano had suggested. I’d tried digging into his heritage, but there was scant information out there about his past. The few clues I’d uncovered hadn’t pointed to anything other than a charmed life. It made me wonder exactly how much information Sebastian put out there, and how many blanks had been filled in by the public.
“Why do I need to keep this between us?” I asked.
“It would be greatly appreciated.”
“By who?”
“By whom,” was all he said.
I waited for him to give me a reason. When he didn’t continue, I said, “I thought you were Irish.”
He snorted. “I have the opposite complexion.”
“Not everyone in Ireland has red hair and pale skin,” I pointed out.
“I’m half Mexican, half Caucasian.”
“Oh. Considering Boston’s strong Irish population, and that your last name is Quinn, I assumed . . .”
“Ah,” he said and got quiet.
“So then is your dad—”
“Look.” He nodded ahead of us. “We’re here.”
Maybe I should’ve known this would be a touchy subject, but I wasn’t an actual therapist. I was only pretending to be one, and an occupational one at that. I kept my eyes on him a moment longer, then looked forward. We’d reached Bryant Park in record time—or maybe talking to Sebastian had just made the walk feel short.
“This is your Zen?”
“I come here to unwind when work gets to me,” he said.
“Unwind?” I asked, feigning shock. “Whatever you do at the office all day, it looks an awful lot like unwinding to me.”
He snorted. “I’m not exactly what you think, Keller.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
“Well, you just accused me of goofing off on the job.”
“Okay, so you do know what I think.”
He gave me a look as he squatted to remove Bruno’s leash. “Go on, boy. Have at it.”
“Wait,” I said, seizing Sebastian’s bicep. Either he responded by flexing, or he was made of stone. “You can’t let him off leash.”
“Why not?”
“For one, it’s illegal outside of the dog run.”
“Do you see the K-9 unit around?”
“Like the bomb sniffers?” I asked. “You know they aren’t the actual dog police.”
“It was a joke. Never mind. Will he run away?”
“I couldn’t lose him if I tried.”
“Is he dangerous?” he asked. “Would he eat a small child?”
“No . . .”
“So, what’s the problem?”
I took a deep breath and looked around. The park had a lot of green grass Bruno would love, but it wasn’t fenced. And he really needed to be monitored during exercise. “Too much excitement is bad for his heart. I never let him off leash outside.”
“Well, shit,” Sebastian said. “How does he play?”
“We take long walks every day and do mental exercises like—”
“Georgina, do you see the size of this guy? He needs to get his zoomies out.”
“Zoomies—?”
Sebastian unclipped the leash, and Bruno bolted across the lawn. “When pets get a burst of energy and act all crazy. There’s a whole Reddit thread dedicated to them.”
I let Bruno get about fifty yards before I called him. Maybe he had the zoomies, but Mom had the panics. It was fun to see him go wild, but I preferred he did it closer. He skidded to a halt and sprinted back to us.
Sebastian slid out his wallet. “You hungry?”
“Not yet. I have lunch at the office.”
“I’ll be right back.”
As he walked away, I watched Bruno zigzag between benches, wrought iron park tables, and other dogs. If only I’d brought his pills, I might’ve been desperate enough to steal someone’s sandwich and turn it into a cocktail of heart meds. Once I’d gotten enough dirty looks, I squatted and whistled for him. He came bounding back and plopped down in front of me.
“Hey, you’re not really going to a Yankees game with that guy Francis, are you?” Sebastian asked from somewhere behind me. “If you want to drink beer, eat hotdogs, and root for a bunch of losers, we can do that at the office any day.”
I looked up once I’d latched Bruno’s leash back on. Sebastian waved a bunless hotdog in a paper tray at me. “It’s François,” I said. “And why wouldn’t I go out with him?”
“He’s clearly some overworked finance bro who got lucky. Right place, right time.”
“Who said anything about finance? Or getting lucky for that matter?”
“He’s a bro, trust me. I’ve got radar for these things. The point is, you made your case, but there’s no reason you have to go through with the date.”