Sebastian had boarded the dinghy, and Topher was just about to jump in when he suddenly cried out, “Sonofabitch, that hurt,” and then hopped on one foot.
Assuming Topher had stepped on a broken shell or perhaps had been pinched by a crab, Sebastian was shocked when, within seconds, his friend doubled over, obviously in extraordinary pain. Could he have stepped on something deadly?
“Get help fast!” he screamed to Sebastian, who quickly pulled Topher into the dinghy and raced to their boat, where he immediately radioed for another boat to contact emergency services on their satellite phone, then managed to pull his friend on board. At that moment, Sebastian kicked himself for not getting a satellite phone for the catamaran.
Meanwhile, Topher writhed in obvious agony, screaming as if someone was gutting him from the inside out.
“Toph, man, hang tight,” Sebastian said, his pulse racing. “They’ll get here as soon as they can.”
Topher’s body became rigid, his eyes wide with terror. His screams pierced the silence that had till then only been broken by seabirds and water lapping at the boat. He lapsed in and out of consciousness.
“Sebastian,” he choked out. “Do something. Knock me out so I can’t feel this pain anymore. I can’t take any more of it. I’d sooner die than have to experience one more second of this.”
Sebastian grabbed his hand and held tight. “Toph, I don’t know what I can do, but I have to try to keep you awake. The emergency medical folks said it was crucial I not let you pass out.”
“I’m fucking dying. And I’m not exaggerating. Please, I’m begging you. Just kill me and get it over with.” Topher’s cries could likely be heard for miles, carried over the open water above the sound of waves or motors or squalling gulls.
It took what seemed a lifetime for the helicopter to arrive and get out to the boat. Immediately, they administered a shot of morphine to stop the pain and three shots of pain medicine in Topher’s foot at the site of whatever this sting was. His foot had swollen to three times its size and looked like it belonged to a cartoon character.
Soon Topher was deeply sedated and stabilized enough to be evacuated to a hospital. Which left Sebastian to stay behind to deal with the sailboat and take care of reaching out to Topher’s family. He was able to hook up with a nearby boat with a satellite phone so that he could make the call. It didn’t help that it would be hours till he could join Topher at the hospital, the whole time not knowing if he’d be alive by the time he got there.
He wasn’t even sure whom to contact but decided Zander would be his go-to man, so he called him first.
“Z, it’s Sebastian,” he said, his voice shaking, he was so fraught with nerves.
“Sebastian! You’re not still mad, are you?”
Sebastian didn’t even know what he was talking about for a minute.
“Oh, man, no. But listen. This is urgent. I’m really sorry to have to call you,” he said. “I don’t even know if I’m waking you up. But I wanted to be sure you knew so you and your family could get here immediately.”
“You all right?”
“It’s Topher.”
“What happened?”
“We were having a perfect day in the most perfect place on the planet,” he said. “He was pushing the dinghy into deeper water and was about to jump on board when he stepped on something. Something venomous. The emergency medical team is pretty sure it’s called a cone snail. It’s a type of snail that launches a deadly poison-filled spear at its prey. And unfortunately, it thought your brother’s foot was dinner.”
“Is he there with you?”
“He just got medevac’d out to a hospital a few hours away from here,” Sebastian said. “I couldn’t go with him; no room on the helicopter, plus I have to deal with this sailboat. But he’s not doing well, Zander. I don’t know if he’s going to live through the night.”
“Fuck,” Zander said. “Listen, text me everything I need to know. I’ve got to get ahold of my family and notify them all so we can leave immediately.”
“Hurry, Zander. I don’t know if he can last.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sebastian arrived at the hospital in the wee hours. He was ushered into Topher’s room, only to find his friend out cold.
“There’s not much we can do but watch him and help to tamp down the pain at this point,” the nurse on duty told him. “It’s a good sign that he seems to be resting somewhat comfortably.”
Sebastian spent most of the night pacing back and forth, taking breaks only to replenish his body’s caffeine supply. He would feel entirely responsible if Topher didn’t pull through this. He was the skipper, and it was the skipper’s job to ensure the safety of those on board his craft.
When The Firm arrived, Sebastian could barely speak; he was riddled with guilt and overrun with exhaustion and worry. He was so relieved that they all got there to hold vigil with Topher, rather than arriving to bury the man. The queen raced to her son, but her husband, Prince Enrico, immediately approached Sebastian.
“You doing all right, son?” he asked his nephew, wrapping him in a strong hug.
Sebastian’s hands were trembling, whether from nerves or too much coffee was anyone’s guess.
“I’m here, if that counts for anything,” he said with a grimace.
“We can’t thank you enough, Sebastian,” Enrico said. “Your swift actions no doubt saved Christopher’s life. You’re the hero in this story.”
Sebastian knit his brows. “But Zio Enrico,” he said, “it was my duty not to let something like this happen to him in the first place.”
“Nonsense, Bass,” he said. “Are you going to ensure that every minuscule thing in the universe will not harm anyone on your boat? Why, that’s downright impossible!”
Sebastian frowned, lost in thought. He couldn’t get out of his head that agonizing hour in which his cousin and good friend was slowly dying, all on his watch.
“I should have had a satellite phone on board,” he said.
“Perhaps we should have enclosed Topher in a plastic bubble, so that no danger would ever befall him,” his uncle said. “Sebastian, I want no more torturing yourself with this. Topher is a grown man and capable of putting himself in danger, or not. What happened is no one’s fault. It was just a freak of nature.”
Sebastian tried to smile.
“I’ll try to take that to heart, sir,” he said. “But it might take some time.”
It was a bit overwhelming seeing everyone at once: his aunt Ariana, the queen, and Enrico, of course, plus Adrian and his new bride Emma, Zander and his girlfriend Andi, Isabella and Luca. Sebastian hadn’t returned to Monaforte for Adrian and Emma’s wedding, so it was his first time meeting Adrian’s new American wife.
He spoke with his cousins for a while outside of the hospital room, while Pippa had Topher all to herself. Amazingly, once Pippa had appeared, Topher finally stirred, opening his eyes and even attempting to speak. So much for that handshake on the boat in the BVI.
Once outside the hospital room with the family, he learned the ever-so-surprising news about Pippa’s pregnancy, which he found downright shocking. Not even a day ago, he and Topher were carefree young men, wandering the world, having the time of their lives. And now, Topher had barely escaped death and was going to be a father. He hoped Pippa would wait until Topher was completely out of the woods to break the news to him. If it was him and some chick handed him that sentence, he’d likely keel over from a heart attack, and he sure didn’t want that to happen to Topher with what was likely a weakened heart.
Sebastian’s Zia Ariana made her way over to see him and enveloped him in her arms.
“Poor Bass,” she said, combing her fingers lovingly through his hair. “This must have been so traumatizing for you.”
Sebastian wrinkled his nose.
“I’m sorry you had to hug me all grimy as I am,” he said. “I’ve not even had a chance to shower and shave and put on clean clothes.” He’d finally slipped
a T-shirt over his swim trunks when he got to the hospital and only now realized he was still barefoot and his skin salty with dry sea water.
Ariana waved her hand. “Please,” she said. “You’re family. We love you however we find you. Besides, I’m just happy you were here for Topher. It sounds as if you’ve saved my son’s life.”
Sebastian was not going to let this hero nonsense get to his head, though.
“Let’s just call it a wash,” he said. “Considering I should never have let it happen in the first place.”
Ariana smiled. “You always were one to take on the responsibilities of the world,” she said, tapping the tip of his nose affectionately with her finger. “Speaking of, my sister tells me this time it’s for real.”’
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s the word on the street. I think you’ll appreciate if I’m a bit skeptical.”
She nodded. “Understandable, sweetheart,” she said. “You took on the burden of your parents’ failed relationship for far too long. Maybe it’s time for you to let go of it and let them worry about things for a bit.”
Sebastian shrugged. “I’ve been pondering giving that a go.”
“So, you’ll come to the wedding, then?”
He nodded. “I have a lot of thinking to do about many things,” he said. “Seems life is trying to teach me a few lessons I thought I’d managed quite well enough on my own.”
She scratched his head affectionately.
“It’s all part of growing up, isn’t it?” she said. “Well, I, for one, am elated that my sister and her husband have finally realized they can be in love and not have to be at war at the same time. I think it’s lovely that they can impart this lesson on all of us at this point.”
“Yeah, well, suffice it to say they’ve left their mark on me,” he said. “And not necessarily in a good way.”
“It’s never too late to realize you are not your parents, Bass,” she said. “You’ve always been such a sweet, loving boy. Maybe it’s time to let people into your life so that they can reciprocate.”
He nodded. “I’ll take that under consideration.”
“In the meantime, I hope you’ll join us while we all settle in to help Topher get better,” she said. “Consider it an impromptu family vacation.”
Sebastian laughed, given that he’d been on an extended vacation for several years. But maybe one with family was just what the doctor ordered.
Chapter Thirty
Clementine was just finishing up breakfast when her mother walked into the kitchen, where Clem had been tucked away in a breakfast nook reading the paper.
“What do you have going on today?” her mother asked.
“Doing a little work for the princess—I mean Elisabetta. Or Liz. I’m never quite sure what to call her.”
“Knowing her, she doesn’t much care what you call her as long as it’s informal,” Charlotte said. “She hates stuffy.”
“Well, I’ll certainly avoid anything too uppity then. You’re welcome to join me,” Clem said. “I might be doing some running around, checking out some fabric swatches for linens, that sort of thing. Nothing too exciting.”
“I didn’t even know she wanted to get that involved with this thing,” Charlotte said. “I figured she’d be perfectly happy throwing the turkey on the kitchen prep counter and letting everyone pick at it.”
Clementine laughed.
“I thought you were going to stop that at ‘throwing the turkey’! You gave me heart palpitations.”
“I’m pretty sure this time she’s in it for the right reasons,” her mum said. “I think her bird-tossing days are behind her.”
“We can only hope. And pray. Fervently,” Clem said, clasping her hands together and holding them skyward. “At least for Sebastian’s sake. I don’t think he could take anything like that again.”
“Speaking of Sebastian—”
Clementine gulped. Here goes.
“Mum, really, I don’t know what you know—”
Her mother knit her brows.
“Know about what?”
“Um, Sebastian? And me?”
Well, crap. Did she just offer herself up on a platter? A turkey platter, at that?
“What about you and Sebastian?”
Clementine squinted at her.
“You haven’t heard anything?”
“You’re being awfully cryptic,” Charlotte said. “I’m completely in the dark, but perhaps it’s time to shine the light on whatever it is you have to say.”
Clementine let out a huge sigh. She had no one to blame but herself for this. Clearly her own guilt forced her hand.
“Fine. It all started when I surprised Pippa by taking her to the BVI to try to patch things up between her and Topher,” Clementine said. And thus she began her true confessions, having outed herself in the stupidest of ways.
~*~
“Well,” Charlotte said, crossing her arms as her daughter told her the whole sordid truth. “That’s quite the story.”
“You’re ashamed of me, I know,” Clem said, putting her head in her hands. “And I’m really sorry. It was so out of character, just nothing I’d ever do. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was just that I’ve felt so unmoored since Papa passed. But I have no excuses. My stupid impulsivity.”
“Who all knows about this?”
“Up until now, um, not you,” Clem said with a pout. “I think Zander’s favorites on his phone ended up getting it. Which really was the best-case scenario, all things considered. Although it’s meant I’ve had far too many encounters with school chums who are happy to give me plenty of grief. Suffice it to say, I’ve stayed off of Facebook lately.”
Her mother gave her a hug. “I’m sure you feel awful about it,” she said. “If it’s any consolation, I think everyone has at least one sort of tawdry episode in their lives they’d just as soon forget happened.”
“I’m sure you haven’t.”
Clementine could never imagine her perfectly ladylike mother doing anything that couldn’t appear on the pages of a magazine.
Charlotte got a faraway look in her eyes, then took a deep breath.
“You’ve confessed to me, so I’ll share my own dirty secret,” she said. “Just so you don’t feel like you’re the only one who’s made a mistake or two along the way.”
Clementine scrunched her eyebrows, baffled at what her mother could have done.
“When I was at boarding school, we often did social events with the boys’ school that wasn’t far from ours,” she said. “In fact now that I think of it, I was with Elisabetta. Of course. That girl could get me to drop my morals like you can’t imagine.”
Clementine’s eyes got large. Her mother, dropping her morals? Impossible.
“She had a flask full of gin that she stuck in her girdle,” she said.
“Girdle?” Clementine said.
Her mother waved her hands. “Consider it the Spanx of the day.”
Clementine laughed and tried to imagine where you’d fit a flask in your Spanx without everyone else noticing it.
“The style of dresses we wore wasn’t so form-fitting back then, so you couldn’t tell,” her mother said. “So we’d gone to this party and, well, when you’re drinking straight gin from a flask, you don’t realize quite how much liquor you’re consuming.”
Ditto for drinks made with Caribbean rum, her daughter thought.
“We were laughing and singing and dancing, having a marvelous time of it,” she said. “And then I had the brilliant idea to stand up on top of a table. Well, those sharp heels and that polished table were not a good combination. My feet slipped out from under me and I went backward and the thing that only half caught me was a nearby window. I say half caught me because I broke through it and fell out of the window and landed upside down in a bush.”
“Mother! I can’t believe you!”
Charlotte laughed at the memory.
“Yes, of course. Prim and proper Charlotte,” she said. �
�Elisabetta was so happy that I finally did something as daringly foolish as her. She stood there clapping and cheering me on and not even offering me a hand up.”
“Were you injured?”
“I was lucky,” she said. “I had some cuts and scrapes on my back, some glass in my hair, but I’d say the biggest injury was to my pride, considering there I was upside down with my girdle showing and all of these young men seeing me in all my shame.”
“Probably got a lot of dates out of it,” Clementine said with a wink.
Her mother playfully pushed her away.
“You’re bad,” she said. “Although now that you mention it, I do believe that was the first time I ever set eyes on your father.”
“Whatever you do, please don’t share any salacious things you did with Daddy,” Clem said with a wink. “I’d rather your image together be preserved intact.”
“Speaking of together,” her mother said, “so when Sebastian came for dinner, you two already, um, knew each other.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“And he stayed in the barn with you,” she said. “Here I thought he was doing that out of the goodness of his heart.”
“Well, sort of,” Clem said. “I put a stop to everything by the time we were on our way to Winnie.”
“Why would you do that? Clearly the two of you have some chemistry,” she said. “And don’t tell me it’s too soon after your father passed. It’s time for you to resume your life, you know.”
“I know, I know. It’s nothing to do with that. The thing is, Sebastian is really scarred from his parents’ actions. I doubt he’s capable of forging a relationship with someone, at least at this point in his life. And he wants nothing to do with Monaforte. He is happy to be far, far away from this country.”
Charlotte pursed her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I completely understand. But it’s a real shame. I guess poor Sebastian bore the brunt of their relationship woes and they didn’t seem to ever get it together enough for him, even though they’d started doing better for the twins.”
“Yeah, well, I just don’t have any interest in dealing with some player who is happy to have a fling but never going to even consider anything more.”
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