Page 27 of Home Again

He nodded. His fingers tightened their grip on her hand as he looked off at nothing.

“Nothing makes sense out of that year. Then there was living here in his house after Dad died. Thank God for Philly and Neil.”

Gianna could picture that.

“I’m so sorry that you had to go through that,” she whispered softly.

“I had Gideon pull the police report. The bullet wound was her only injury, so I can take solace in that, but her murder has never been solved.”

Gianna knew that.

Sebastian looked back at her, his gaze fierce. “I remember months before my mother died, Dad and my grandfather arguing about her. Grandpère was pissed. Said something about how she was trouble. After she was killed I confronted Dad, and he said I was confused. A month later he was dead.”

“What happened after that?” she asked.

“I acted out. I got in so many fights in school and I was suspended so often that I would have been kept back a grade if I weren’t Lazar’s grandkid.”

“How long did that go on?” she asked.

“It wasn’t until I took on the O’Malley brothers and they wiped the floor with me. Then they laughed it off and took me home with them. Of course, the O’Malleys weren’t good enough for me to be friends with in Grandpère’s eyes, so I’d only see them when congress was in session.”

Gianna grinned. She liked the idea of him having friends like Fergus growing up.

“He’s a flirt, you know.”

“Yeah, I caught on to that.” She pulled her hand away and started piling up the plates so she could take them to the sink. She needed to think.

Gianna wasn’t surprised when Sebastian came up beside her and brought over the whisk and mixing bowl.

“You were pretty confident you would be invited to stay when you showed up with your little trailer, huh?” Sebastian gave her a look out of the corner of his eye.

“That was just my first ploy. If that didn’t work, I figured I could knock on the front door and tell Lazar that I was writing a book about famous Louisiana statesmen, and he deserved at least three chapters.”

Sebastian let out a long laugh. “Yep, that would have done it. Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Because then I would have been forced to pander to him all the time. This way I got to work on my sketches.”

She rinsed her hands after putting the last dish in the dishwasher and turned to Sebastian. “It seems to me that you and I have a lot in common.”

He raised his eyebrow. “Hmmm.”

Darn, he’s going to make me work for it.

“Yeah, it looks like we both want to know what happened to our mothers.”

He nodded.

She shoved her hands on her hips. “For God’s sake, Sebastian. Do I really need to spell it out!”

He crossed his arms over his wide chest and gave her a small grin. “Yep.”

“I think we should work together.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, cher. I work alone.”

She saw red, but then her vision cleared. “That is total hogwash. SEALs work in teams. You are totally a team player.”

“And you aren’t one of my teammates.”

“Two heads are better than one.”

“Cher, I saw your sleuthing abilities last night. You almost knocked yourself out. I’m going to be better off on my own.”

Gianna took a deep breath. Time for a new tactic. “All righty then, I won’t tell you about the LLC out of Delaware that Jada dug up.” She headed for the kitchen door. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t follow her, but he would. She knew he would.