by Lauren Layne
“Sorry,” Hugh says, not looking even remotely sorry. “The buyer of this one seemed quite set on it. I can’t imagine him wanting to sell.”
“Me neither.”
I whirl around at the familiar voice, though it’s one I hadn’t expected to hear tonight, no matter how desperately I wanted to.
I find myself grinning into his smiling aqua eyes, and acting purely on instinct, I fling my arms around his neck. “You decided to come!”
He hugs me back, strong and sure, and when I start to pull away, his arms tighten almost imperceptibly as though hesitant to let me go. He releases me and turns to Mr. Frey.
“Doug, good to see you again. It’s been a while.”
The older man smiles and shakes Sebastian’s hand. “You’re not usually so quick on the draw with Hugh’s pieces, but I should have known you’d get the drop on me one of these days.”
“I’m not usually so quick on the draw with Hugh’s pieces, no,” Sebastian clarifies. “But with Gracie Cooper originals, on the other hand, it took some restraint to limit myself to these two.”
It takes me a second to register the meaning of his words, and I look up. “Wait. You bought these? Why?”
Sebastian’s eyes are warm as they look down at me. “I should think it would be obvious.” His voice is quiet, meant for my ears only, and as though sensing they’re no longer a part of the conversation, Hugh and Doug Frey tactfully shift away to mingle with the rest of the guests.
I feel flustered. And confused. And anticipatory, like I’m on the edge of something life changing but missing a key piece of the puzzle.
“The Central Park one, I guess I understand,” I say. “But the other, that’s—”
“You and your mystery man,” Sebastian finishes for me before glancing around the room curiously. “Speaking of, where is he?”
Horrified to realize I’d forgotten about the big meeting after Sebastian’s surprise arrival, I quickly scan the men in the room. There are plenty of suits. No pink roses. My heart sinks, but I remind myself he could simply be running late, or gathering his courage…
“He’ll be here,” I say stubbornly, still peering through the crowd, because I need to believe it. Because every part of my heart believes that this is my night, that this is my man, that—
“Gracie.” Sebastian says my name quietly, the ache of it wrapping around my heart and pulling me back around to face him.
I meet his eyes, and the tender expression makes me furious with frustration and longing. How dare he do this now, how dare he make me wish—
A flash of pink catches my eye.
I drop my gaze to his chest. To his suit pocket, where a single perfect pink rose is tucked, a simple, sweet beacon calling me home.
My mind whirls, and I shake my head in confused denial at the flower. “How did you—I didn’t tell—the only person who knew about the pink rose…”
Oh my God.
There’s only one way Sebastian Andrews could know what to wear tonight. Only one reason he’d want both paintings, the one of him and me and…
The other one of him and me. Of me and Sir.
Because they’re one and the same.
My eyes close as all the pieces slowly fit together. The overlaps between the two men. The revelation that Gary isn’t Sebastian’s biological dad, which means that Sebastian’s real father could be dead… just like Sir’s.
The pink flowers today, a hint, a promise. The other woman, the complicated one he couldn’t bear to lose. Me.
I open my eyes and slowly lift my gaze to his, where he seems to be holding his breath, his heart and hope in his eyes.
“It’s you,” I say softly. “It’s always been you.”
“Yes.” He whispers it, his hand lifting toward my face, hesitating. Then, very gently, he sets his fingers to my cheek, his thumb catching a tear I didn’t realize had fallen. “Yes.”
“When did you know?” I ask as his fingers trace over my cheek tenderly.
“Your cat’s name was the first jolt. That Gracie’s and Lady’s cats were both named Cannoli caught me off guard. Then you passionately defended gelato, which was familiar. After that, I went back and read every message, and I could only hear your voice. Then that night at dinner, you told me all about—”
“You,” I say with a smile. “I told you all about yourself.”
“You told me about us.” He smiles back, the palm on my cheek more sure now, his eyes warm as they touch on my every feature, as we see each other finally, as we fully are. His gaze drops to my mouth, his head lowers.
“Wait.” I put a hand to his chest, lightly. “Why not tell me at dinner? Why this whole thing?”
“Well, because I was ninety-nine percent sure, but since my heart was on the line as well, I wanted that last one percent. And I knew that if Lady asked Sir to the art show, I’d have it. And because…” That same flicker of vulnerability I’ve seen before, the one that tugs deep at my heart flits across his face, and he glances down, embarrassed. “I’m not the easiest guy to love. Not by a long shot, and I wanted—” He takes a deep breath. “I wanted you to love both Sebastian and Sir. Because I’m a selfish ass, and I wanted you to love both sides of me, as much as I love both sides of you. And because of what I said before—you deserve the fairy-tale ending, and I can only hope you’ll give me a chance to be yours, Gracie.”
I wipe my eyes impatiently, since the tears are blurring my vision, and now that I’ve found him, I don’t want to miss a second of looking at his face. “I should hate you. Do you have any idea how it tore me up? I was so sure Sir was my soul mate, but then Sebastian showed up, and I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And then I was falling in love with both—”
His mouth closes over mine, our lips fitting together perfectly, and his hand slowly slides around my waist, his palm spreading wide on my back and pulling me closer.
It’s a fairy-tale kiss.
Okay, fine, it’s a PG-13 fairy-tale kiss, with tongues and hands, and a lot of cheering and whoops from the crowd.
Someone yells, “Get a room!” Caleb.
Someone blows their nose loudly. May.
Wolf whistle. Keva. Or maybe Rachel.
Cheering mixed with the occasional sob. Lily.
And then something warm and invisible seems to wrap around us. Squeezing. Loving.
Dad. Mine. His. My mom.
Sebastian pulls back slowly, his thumb reverently touching my bottom lip, and he smiles down at me, looking every bit as happy as I feel.
“You know,” I say teasingly, touching a finger to the pink rose. “If you want to snatch up all my paintings of us, you should have made it a trio. The one of the guy in the suit and the aqua eyes? That’s you.”
“I know,” he says with a mischievous grin. “I knew the second I saw it in your living room.”
“But you didn’t want it? You didn’t like it?”
“I like it. I like it a lot, and I really like knowing that you were thinking about me as often as I was thinking about you.”
“But…?”
He lowers his head to whisper playfully. “But I’ll be honest, I thought it would be a little vain to have a painting of myself hanging in our home.”
I let out a stunned laugh. “Our home? Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you there, Sir?”
“My dear Lady, you stole my heart twice. If you think I’m letting another second of my life pass without you in it, I’ll have to kiss you again to set you straight.”
And he does.
Cinderella’s glass slipper? It’s got nothing on Sebastian Andrews’s kiss.
Epilogue
One Year Later
To Sir, with suspicion,
As an anniversary gift, Keva sent me the spreadsheet with the wagers you all made that night of my show at the gallery.
You described yourself exactly. Seeing as you had an unfair advantage, you, sir, should forfeit your prize.
Lady
* * *
I’ll gladly return the hundred bucks, but I’m not giving back the prize: you.
Yours in victory,
Sir
* * *
To Sir, with begrudging respect,
Well played. Also, did you get the anniversary gift I sent to your office? I call it Man with the Aqua Eyes, the Sequel.
Lady
* * *
My dear Lady,
I did. You might have mentioned that it was a nude.
My mother saw it.
Yours in I will never recover,
Sir
* * *
To Sir, with glee,
Be grateful. Hugh and Myron insisted that if I agreed to display it in the gallery, it’d fetch my highest sale price yet.
Lady
* * *
My dear Lady,
I’m ignoring that. Did you get my anniversary gift?
Yours in wondering,
Sir
* * *
To Sir, with love,
A bassinet shaped like Cinderella’s slipper for Baby Girl Andrews? I’m still trying to find the words.
Lady
* * *
Gracie,
Find them later. Quit texting me from the living room and come to bed.
Your loving husband,
Sebastian
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading To Sir, with Love. If you’ve made it this far, I hope that means you finished the book, and I hope even more that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Sebastian and Gracie’s story is one that’s been with me for years—long before I typed the words Chapter One. Nora Ephron is one of my heroes, and You’ve Got Mail has always been my favorite of her works. But as strongly as I felt called to tell my own version of a couple who fell in love twice—once in person and once over “letters”—it took me a good long while to figure out what my version of that love story looked like.
In the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László (the original!), it was letters. In 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, as well as in the musicals In the Good Old Summertime and She Loves Me, it was also letters.
In 1998, Nora Ephron updated the story in You’ve Got Mail to business rivals falling in love over email. In To Sir, with Love, I wanted to bring that wonderful, classic premise into the twenty-first century, and being a millennial (albeit an elder millennial), for me that meant Gracie and the mysterious Sir falling in love over, what else: an app.
One thing that struck me, even as I wrote Gracie constantly checking her phone in a very twenty-first-century kind of way, is the timelessness of this story. Gracie breathlessly waiting for a notification on her app didn’t feel so different from Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart checking their physical mailboxes in The Shop Around the Corner in 1940. Or Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks listening to that unmistakable ’90s sound (to those of us who remember it) of AOL connecting to the Internet, holding their breath in the hopes that they’d hear those three little words: You’ve got mail!
I realized that while I set out to create a modern homage to Parfumerie, in the end, it didn’t matter whether it was a letter, an email, a postcard, a telegram, a text, or a message in a dating app. This is not a story about technology or the specific means of communication. This is a story about hope. It’s about determined optimism that the person on the other side of that written communication will be every bit as wonderful as he or she seems to be. It’s a story about the folly of first impressions, about forgiveness and growth, about kindness and friendship.
Handwritten letters may be increasingly becoming a thing of the past, but those feelings of finding yourself and falling in love never go out of style. It’s my fondest hope that I’ve captured those feelings in these pages.
The early stages of this story happened inside my head—years’ worth of musing, of discovering the characters, of uncovering the story’s essence, and lots of early mornings hunched over my laptop at 5 a.m., desperately trying to type the story as quickly as it was unfolding in my imagination.
Upon finishing the first draft, however, To Sir, with Love became a group effort, in the best sort of way. This story absolutely would not exist in its current form without the hard work, patience, and genius of my editor, Sara Quaranta. She seemed to know what I was trying to do with the story better than I did, and somewhere amidst the pesky world of revisions, I uncovered not only the heart of the story but also a new friend in Sara.
I am so fortunate to have discovered an incredible publishing partner in Gallery. Their support for me, and this book, has been almost palpable. A huge thank-you to Lisa Litwack and Connie Gabbert for understanding so thoroughly the cover this story needed, even before it was finished. To Faren Bachelis and Crissie Johnson Molina, for their enviable attention to detail as they patiently polished all my writing’s rough edges. And especially to Christine Masters, who I’m convinced is some sort of wizard, with the magical ability to take tens of thousands of words and whip them into book-shape.
And, as always, no Lauren Layne book would exist in the world without the unwavering support of Nicole Resciniti, my amazing agent, whose belief in me has never wavered since those early days when she plucked my messy first manuscript out of the slush pile and gave me a shot at making my dreams come true.
I also need to thank my inner circle—the people who know me not as Lauren Layne, but simply as Lo, or Fern, or “Well, Lauren always did read a lot as a kid, so I guess it makes sense she’s turned into a hermit writer now…” Your love and support, even while I disappear for weeks at a time inside a manuscript, mean the world to me. To my husband, Anthony, in particular, for refilling my coffee cup without my asking, for making me meals even when I’m deep into a scene and probably forget to say thank you. I love my book heroes, but make no mistake: you are the real hero.
To all of my readers, especially those who’ve been with me since my earliest Stiletto days, who patiently go along with whatever my Muse feels like writing, who offer words of encouragement and who I feel—truly feel—silently cheering me on, even when I take a step back from social media and “public life” to focus on my writing. I’m very grateful for you, and I appreciate you, even when I’m quiet. Especially when I’m quiet.
And lastly, to Miklós László for creating a story so wonderful, so beloved that it’s inspired writers and creators many times over, and to the late, great Nora Ephron for being so freaking fabulous.
xo.
Lauren Layne
December 2020
More from the Author
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About the Author
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY LEDONNE
LAUREN LAYNE is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than three dozen romantic comedies. Her books have sold over a million copies in nine languages. Lauren’s work has been featured in Publishers Weekly, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, and Inside Edition. She is based in New York City.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Lauren-Layne
SimonandSchuster.com
@GalleryBooks
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Marriage on Madison Avenue
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For Better or Worse
To Love and to Cherish
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Layne
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First Gallery Books trade paperback edition June 2021
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