Read Online The Longest Yard Sale by Sherry Harris - Free Book Online Page A

soirée at his family’s compound on Nantucket. I’d refused. He’d called me stubborn. Which I was, but that wasn’t the point.
    The last I’d seen or heard of him was in an article in the Boston Globe . He’d been pictured at the event with a super-thin Victoria’s Secret model. She glowed on his arm, dressed in a gown that probably cost more than I’d spent on clothes in the past five years. Seth looked a little stiff in the picture, or maybe it was my wishful thinking.
    â€œOpen up, Sarah,” Seth yelled through the door. “You won’t even eat a pizza with me now?”
    I didn’t want him to cause a scene—not that he would—but that was my excuse for opening the door and letting him in.
    â€œWhere should I put this?” he asked, raising the pizza box. I pointed to the right, toward the kitchen. Seth paused, looking around the apartment. I looked around, too. The old oriental rug glowed against the painted, white-wooden floors, a claw-and-ball-foot table sat next to my grandmother’s rocker. The down-stuffed couch was comfy. Paintings, one by Carol and the rest treasured finds, warmed the walls.
    â€œI like it,” Seth said. “It looks like you. Full of personality.”
    â€œThanks.” I followed him into the kitchen. He put the pizza box and wine on the table. He turned, pulling me into his arms and giving me a kiss so incredible that I felt like a lone ice cube under the Saharan sun. He broke the kiss and stared into my eyes, the ones without any eye shadow or mascara. Personally, without makeup I thought my eyelids looked like fish eyelids, if fish had eyelids. It was not the way I wanted Massachusetts’s most eligible, Victoria’s-Secret-model-dating bachelor to see me.
    Seth pulled out a chair for me. I hesitated.
    â€œI can leave you the pizza and wine if that’s what you want. But that kiss didn’t seem to say that’s what you wanted.”
    What was that song? Something about lips don’t lie? Stupid lips. I sat in the chair and realized the song was about hips, not lips—not that it really mattered. I gestured for Seth to sit. Instead of sitting across from me, he moved the other chair next to mine and took my hand as he sat down.
    â€œNo one can see us here,” he said. “We’ve spent the past six months meeting at hole-in-the-wall restaurants in towns that feel like they’re farther away from Ellington than the northern tip of Maine. Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
    â€œNo. That’s ridiculous.” No one would be ashamed to be seen with Seth. He looked like he could be a model—high cheekbones, wavy, dark hair with some silver woven in, broad, thick shoulders. The only thing keeping him from actually being a model was his nose, which was a bit broad, not aquiline—and that made him all the more sexy because he looked like a real man, not some photo-shopped, starved version of a human male.
    â€œYou date models. Not regular women who look like this.” I air-circled around my face.
    â€œI see a beautiful, vibrant woman who eats actual food instead of surviving on liquids and carrots. One who doesn’t pretend to like pizza and the Red Sox because I do. One who isn’t interested in me because of my last name.” He kissed me again. “You’re still afraid that CJ will find out you’re seeing me, that someone will spot me sneaking out of your apartment at dawn.” He grinned, but I could see his feelings were hurt.
    â€œYou’ll be leaving after we’re done eating. Not sneaking out at dawn.” I got up and grabbed a corkscrew. “I’ve told CJ we need to see other people. But I haven’t told him who I am seeing. It’s none of his business.” I didn’t want to hurt CJ, and he would be hurt if he found out I was dating Seth. “It’s awkward that you two have to work together.” Seth was