Читать книгу: «An Australian Surrender», страница 4
CHAPTER FIVE
TOTAL bliss. She was warm. And comfy. Happy even. Cocooned in the thousand-thread-count sheets in a luxury hotel. And room service was on its way up with coffee.
Noelle snuggled down deeper into the bedding and sighed. For a few moments her mind was blank, and then last night came rushing through it. Not just her mind, her body. She could feel him again, his large, warm hands on her hips, his lips against her jaw.
She flung her arm over her eyes and growled into the empty room. She didn’t want to be dealing with this at the moment. And definitely not with him. She had to keep it in the realm of business transaction or it was just … wrong.
There was a heavy knock on the door and she tugged the covers up to her throat. “Come in.”
“Morning.” He brought coffee, but he wasn’t room service. Ethan strode in, looking amazing and not at all like they’d stayed at a party until the early hours of the morning.
He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt that was open at the collar. She could see just a hint of dark chest hair when he moved and the shirt gaped a bit … and she was staring. And it was probably obvious. She looked out the window.
“So you aren’t … I was expecting room service.”
“I intercepted them. Said I wanted to wish my darling Noelle a good morning in a way only I could.”
She felt her face get hot. “You do have a flair for drama.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t say that. But I do want this to work. And in order for that to happen, everyone around me has to believe that you’ve done a real number on me.”
“Do they?” She couldn’t really imagine doing a number on a man. Not when his presence made her feel hot and sort of uncomfortable. But not in a bad way, really. Actually, it was the most pleasant discomfort she’d ever felt before.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” He looked surprised by her question. “What?” She shrugged. “I’m sort of … working for you now. Kind of my job to be at your beck and call.”
His facial expression shifted, a subtle change, his lips parting slightly, a dark and dangerous light illuminating his brown eyes. The intensity of his focus only made that discomfort spread through her a little more, from her tightened stomach and pounding heart down to her limbs, to the apex of her thighs.
“Now that is a very interesting and tempting thought, Noelle.”
Noelle felt heat creep from her breasts up her throat and into her face. She knew she was pink everywhere. She was usually so pale, her skin always gave her away.
Because she knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing she was thinking. Her mind was back on last night, on what it had felt like to be in his arms. And now here she was, in bed, and it all seemed easy … as if everything might be simpler if she just scooted over and made room for him next to her.
She gulped a too-hot mouthful of coffee and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The briefness of her nightie was now the least of her worries.
“Not what I meant, Ethan.”
“I don’t have designs on your womanly virtue,” he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm. “Promise. Much too complicated at this stage in the game.”
“Agreed,” she said, ignoring the heat in her cheeks. Womanly virtue. Good grief. If only that wasn’t so close to the truth—not that she counted it as a virtue. More like a somewhat telling commentary on just how thoroughly her life had been managed from moment one.
No boyfriends. Not even a hint of teenage rebellion. She’d been too busy. And she’d believed so strongly in everything her mother had asked of her, had wanted to repay her for the years of travel and lessons by doing well.
By doing what she’d been asked, or rather ordered, to do. And now she was paying for it, since she didn’t know the first thing about real life. She knew about glitz and glamour, but not how to make the money to achieve it for herself. She knew about air kisses and fake praise, but not about real relationships. Real kisses. Ethan had come the closest.
She shivered at the memory.
“Come to work with me?”
“Um … sure.” It wasn’t at all what she’d had in mind, but then, she wasn’t really certain what she’d had in mind. “I’m not going to be spending every waking minute with you, am I?”
“I don’t know, what would you do if you were head over heels in love? In love enough to get engaged only a couple of weeks after meeting someone?”
She laughed as she edged over to the bathroom, conscious of her semi-dressed state. “I have no idea.”
“I don’t either, but I imagine that we very much would spend every waking, and non-waking, moment together.”
His eyes, so hot on her, felt like an intimate caress. One that made her burn inside. She crossed her arms over her breasts to disguise her nipples, beaded tight against the filmy fabric with no bra to help hide the effect he was having on her.
“In any case, going to work with you today might be … fun.”
Ethan gritted his teeth and fought hard against the razor-sharp edge of arousal that was digging into him, cutting into his control. She was barely covered up by a silky, bright-blue confection that looked as though it was designed for the sole purpose of driving a man to an early grave. Or at least to the hospital to see a doctor about an erection lasting longer than four hours …
She wasn’t just an easy tumble though. This wasn’t about sex, and it sure wasn’t about using her body. He didn’t need her body. He could have his pick of any woman he wanted. He wasn’t about to let her control him, not about to let himself believe the attraction to her was special in any way beyond what was normal. He’d let it make an idiot of him last night. He’d flirted with her. Nearly kissed her.
He just hadn’t had sex in so long that his body was trying to convince him she was special. She wasn’t. She was just another blonde. Blondes he’d had. Lots of them.
But her legs. So long and shapely, and her figure, petite and luscious, pert round breasts that called out to him. To touch. To taste. He had a feeling that even if he’d satisfied his libido last week—hell, last night—he’d feel the same way.
Feel some sort of sick craving to possess her in every way. To make sure the deal went through? No, not even he would stoop that low. This wasn’t about her; not about hurting her anyway. It wasn’t even about hurting her mother, not on his part, anyway. It was about showing his father that going through life using people as rungs on the ladder of success and satisfaction didn’t work.
About making sure Damien Grey wouldn’t get rewarded for it.
“Maybe you should go get dressed.”
Her cheeks turned pink, a deep rose that betrayed her embarrassment. That was a novelty, one he wasn’t sure how he felt about. A woman who blushed like that over something so simple, that wasn’t really his thing. And yet for some reason, it made his body harder, more tense, more aroused.
This was a business deal, in a way, and he had to remember that. But he worked with women every day without experiencing this problem. Of course, the women he worked with didn’t come into the boardroom wearing silky lingerie.
He ground his teeth together and tightened his hands into fists, channeling his tension into his screaming tendons. He had to get a grip. On his libido or his body, he didn’t really care, but the attraction to Noelle had to be managed.
“Right.” She slunk off to the bathroom, and he let out a breath he hadn’t been conscious of holding.
The office was safe at least. It would give him a chance to remember why he was doing this. Give his body a chance to calm down. Because he had a goal and he wasn’t about to let an errant attraction distract him from reaching it.
More importantly, he wasn’t about to give in to temptation, to let his body have the control when he despised men who behaved like having testosterone meant they couldn’t be their own masters.
He’d watched his father do it, time and again. Disregarding the feelings of his wife, his children, and for what? For the pursuit of his own selfish pleasure. Casting off every last piece of his honor, his commitments, to chase after a woman who, in the end, wouldn’t even stay with him.
He looked at the closed bathroom door and tried not to imagine Noelle’s nightgown slithering over her curves and pooling onto the floor.
He wasn’t his father. And while she wasn’t her mother, she was the one woman who was patently off limits.
“You do have a nice office.” Noelle leaned back in his office chair, her long legs stretched out in front of her, black tights covering all that tempting, creamy skin, but doing nothing to disguise the shape.
Turned out she was just as sexy when she was fully dressed. Which he’d known after last night, but when he’d invited her to the office he’d imagined she’d put on something more business-casual. He had discovered that ex-performers didn’t have much in the way of business-casual. What she did have was a brief, black dress, black tights and a pair of gold high heels that glowed from fifty paces away.
And all that pale blond hair, hanging loose around her face like a halo … she was just impossible to put in a corner and ignore. And that was problematic on many, many levels.
“Gets the job done anyway,” he said.
“Is there something I can do?” She straightened, crossing her legs at the ankles. It did not help make her look any more demure.
“You can get out of my chair.”
She turned crimson and popped up. “Okay, done. Anything else?”
“You want to work?”
“Well, I’m here.” She shrugged. “It seems like I ought to do something. Won’t people think it’s funny I’m just hanging out?”
“I don’t think anyone thinks it’s funny at all. I think they assume we’re in here not working.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Really. Did you see the paper this morning?”
“No, I didn’t have the chance to grab it.”
“We’re the new hot couple, you know.”
“Can I see?”
He rounded the desk and leaned over, typing in the web address for the newspaper they’d been featured in. “There you are.”
She leaned in next to him, that sweet vanilla scent teasing his senses, making his body harden with tension and arousal.
A small smile curved her lips. “They know my name.”
“You sound surprised.”
“No one’s missed me much over the past year. Which I actually consider kind of a blessing. I haven’t really been keen on sharing my downfall with the world.”
“What? That your mother stole your money?”
“That she abandoned me because she knew she’d gotten everything she could out of me. Because my sales—album sales, ticket sales—were dwindling to nothing.”
“So what have you been doing then, this past year?”
She shrugged again, her blue eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind him. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She looked at him, pale eyes filled with anger now. “Maybe I haven’t done the best I could with my time. But I didn’t really know what to do. I only know how to do one thing.” She looked away. “My mother made sure I only knew one thing. I tried to … I tried to talk to my old booking agent. Tried to see about playing venues I used to play. I called my label and asked them if they wanted to release a greatest hits album. Turns out, they don’t think I have any.” She laughed, a hollow, bitter sound that made his chest ache. “So in that sense, I did something. But I just … I didn’t know what else to do when all of that was shot down.”
“What about playing piano bars and things like that?”
“Ironically, that’s the kind of thing I am a bit too famous for, and I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, I mean … I didn’t want that to show up in tabloids.”
“That’s not really a great excuse, Noelle. You basically just sat there and let everything fall apart.”
“No. No I did not. Everything was wrecked, utterly wrecked by my mother. She smashed everything to pieces—I didn’t let it fall apart. And yes, maybe I could have done something, maybe I should have, but every night I’ve gone to bed hoping … hoping that somehow in the morning it would be fixed. That things would go back to normal. I tried to force it to go back to normal.” She looked at him, blue eyes intent on his, an impact he felt all the way through his body. “Now … now I don’t even want things to go back to normal. But I just … I felt burned out. I was just so tired. This, having a chance to hold onto something, this at least makes me feel like I can fight. Like I have something to fight with.”
His chest felt strange. As if it had gotten smaller, or his heart had gotten larger. He didn’t like it. “You could learn something else.”
Her frame slumped. “I don’t know if I have the energy anymore. To devote myself to mastering something other than music, I mean. I’ve done that. Practicing, improving, every day without stopping since I was a child. It didn’t really get me anywhere, did it?”
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to try and offer her … something. Comfort maybe? He only knew that he did. “Very few people live their lives that way, Noelle. With drills and practice for eight hours a day, in addition to performing and promoting and traveling.”
“Are you telling me you work any less hard?” she asked.
“No, I work a lot. But I choose to. There are plenty of people who go nine to five, five days a week.”
She looked down, her throat working. “What if I can’t do anything else?”
Everything about his carefully laid plan, her being in the office, her being anywhere near him, suddenly felt wrong. Like he was joining in the queue of people who’d used her.
A bit too late to feel that way.
Much too late. And she was walking in with her eyes open.
“Of course you can. Here,” he slapped his palm on the leather back of the chair, “get in the chair.”
She sat back down, her expression confused. Damn, but she made him feel every inch the Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. He didn’t really like the feeling.
He shoved his conscience to one side. He’d deal with it later. “Do you type?”
She grimaced. “Not really. Not fast.”
“Well, you’re going to learn.” He pulled out a stack of papers he’d set aside for his PA. “I want you to enter this into the computer. These are specs for different building plans. If you enter the numbers in these cells, the computer will do the math for you. You just enter it in.”
“I can do that.”
“Okay, do that. I’m going to go down the hall and make some phone calls, and I’ll be back to check on you.” Distance was definitely necessary.
He walked out of the office and closed the door behind him, his chest still tight. He didn’t know why it mattered, but he wanted to show Noelle that she could do something. Something other than doing drills every day for a career that had crumbled to nothing right in front of her.
More than that, he didn’t like what he saw in her eyes. That look that said she saw herself as a failure. He’d watched his mother go through that. Watched her pin her self-worth on the perception of a fickle public.
There was no happiness there.
When and how had he started comparing her to his mother? He ought to be comparing her to her own. Actually, the truth of it was, he shouldn’t be putting this much thought into her either way. She was just the means to an end, and he was the same to her.
This wasn’t personal. Not between the two of them.
He ignored the kick in his gut that said otherwise.
The sense of accomplishment that filled Noelle when she moved the last piece of paper to her finished stack was silly, and she knew it. It had been an easy job, one that she was sure anyone with fingers could do, and yet, it was more than she’d pushed herself to do recently.
She’d been so determined to live in the past. All the time she spent still doing drills she could have used to learn any number of job skills. She simply hadn’t. Part of her hadn’t believed she could. But Ethan had believed in her. Enough to leave her in his office on her own, to trust her to do the work.
The door to the office opened and Ethan walked in. “I did it,” she said, not quite able to wipe the idiot grin off of her face.
“Good,” he said, not half as thrilled as she was.
“Thank you.”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “It’s nothing. My PA will be happy that she doesn’t have to do that today.”
“It was something to me.”
His eyebrows locked together. “You can do things, Noelle. You aren’t stupid. You aren’t handicapped in any way. You can do whatever you like. Don’t leave it up to the public to decide how much you’re worth.”
Did she do that? She supposed she had. She’d been so worried about what people might think … that was one reason she hadn’t gone and gotten a job. That and the lingering hope that someday she’d be able to fix things.
But she hadn’t fixed it yet. And she’d let things get too bad. So much of this had become her fault.
“You’re right.”
“Yeah, well, of course,” he said.
“Really. I could have done something. I didn’t.”
“Well you can do data entry for me if you like. It’s boring, but my PA thinks so too, so she’ll be glad to do other things.”
Noelle felt her throat tighten and then she just felt silly. Getting emotional over a desk job.
“Thank you.”
“It will allow you to be around the office more, which will be good as far as setting the stage for our wedding.”
She swallowed. “Yes, it will.”
“No working late, though. I plan on keeping you very busy at night.”
CHAPTER SIX
KEEPING her busy at night turned out to mean something very different from what she’d immediately thought. She was slightly embarrassed to admit, even to herself, exactly what her first thoughts had been.
But what he actually meant turned out to be something far beyond what she’d imagined.
“Australia?” she asked the next morning when Ethan stopped by. It was good for the staff to see him there, he said. Even better if they just thought he was leaving early after a night of unbridled passion.
“Yeah. I need you to come and meet my family, and in order to do that you have to come to my family’s home. Not my parents’ home. My grandparents’ home. I spent a lot of time there growing up.”
“That’s … that’s really nice.” She frowned. “I really don’t like the idea of lying to your grandparents.”
“I’m sure my grandfather half expects this. He’s controlling as hell, but I actually think he means well. He knows I’ll do the right thing, or at least the thing he asks of me. Which is more than he’s ever got from his own son.”
Ethan made it sound as if his parents were a lost cause, but at least he had his grandparents. She didn’t have that. Her father, an investment banker from Switzerland according to her mother, had left before her first birthday. And her mother’s antics had alienated Noelle’s grandparents long before she was born.
She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have that stability. Any stability.
“Do they … do they know about my mother and your father?”
“Odds are they do. He wasn’t exactly discreet.”
“Ethan, I’m …”
“Don’t.”
She stopped the apology from tumbling out and tried not to be too hurt by the hard tone of his voice. She cleared her throat. “But your grandfather … he’s good to you?”
Ethan shrugged. “Yeah. He’s tough, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Do it again, Noelle. You’re getting sloppy. Why was her mother’s voice still so loud? Just the memory of it made her hands ache. She remembered doing scales for hours, so long that she could hardly feel her fingers anymore, so that the action seemed disconnected from her body, divorced from conscious thought.
“Too tough isn’t always good,” she said, flexing her fingers to try and relieve the phantom pains.
“Too easy isn’t good either. No discipline? No control? Makes for a pretty worthless excuse for a human being.”
The venom in his tone surprised her. “And too much turns you into a machine repeating the same drills on the piano eight hours a day.”
“It’s a rare person who has too much discipline, Noelle. But you might fit under the heading.”
“You too, Ethan?”
He turned to face her, his dark eyes molten, hot, burning straight into her. “That remains to be seen, I think. Be prepared for my grandmother to grill you, by the way.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding and tried to smile. “This is going to be quite the dinner party.”
“This may be why I haven’t married yet.” He chuckled darkly. “My family is far too dysfunctional to inflict on anyone else. Of course, it may be me. If they’re as bad as all that, I can’t be much better.”
“You seem nice to me.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Noelle, you don’t really know me. If you did, you might feel differently. And you aren’t marrying me, not really. Not forever.” The look that flashed in his dark eyes was strange, pain-filled. It made Noelle’s stomach tighten.
“It’s all right, you don’t know me either.”
“It’s probably why we get on so well.”
She laughed. “Is this your definition of getting on well?”
“We’re both still standing.” Ethan cocked his head to the side, his expression intense. She could feel his gaze, almost like a physical touch as he looked at her body. Her breasts. She was certain he was looking there because she could feel it. “For now.” The air in the room seemed to thicken, a strange electric feeling arching between them as he took a step towards her. Only one step. No more. And she had the feeling that if there was going to be anything more, she would have to make the next move.
Her feet seemed to be rooted to the spot.
“I guess we’ll get to know each other in Australia,” she said. “Although I think it’s kind of a raw deal, you hiring me and then making me ask my boss for vacation time.”
“I’ll keep you busy,” he said, his voice rough. “And yeah, we may get to know each other a little better.”
“We won’t actually be staying with my grandparents.” Ethan turned to look at her as he navigated the busy Brisbane expressway and took an exit that led off into one of the suburbs.
She could swear that Ethan’s accent had thickened the moment they’d landed in his home country. And she liked it. A little bit more than she should. But it was fascinating, being alone with a man like this. It was something she’d never really experienced before. Well, discounting her piano instructor.
“Where will we be staying?”
“One of my hotels. On the beach. I think you’ll like it.”
“How long have you owned it?”
“It’s been there for years, but I bought it and had some renovation done on it about six years back.”
“I’ve been here before,” she said, looking out the window at the passing scenery. “I didn’t get to see anything. Just the roadway from the airport to the hotel, to the theater, then back to the airport. We went to Sydney after. I didn’t get to see much of it either.”
“You never went sightseeing when you traveled?”
She bit her lip. “When we were in Europe we did a bit of it, as part of my schooling. I had a good tutor. He made sure I finished my studies early. I graduated at fifteen, so I was able to practice my music more.”
“Have you ever concentrated on anything but your music?”
“I’ve just been concentrating on breathing this past year,” she said, watching the deep green eucalyptus trees blur together into a continuous smear of color. “And before that, just breathing and playing. I want to do more than that now.”
“Data entry?”
She shot him her deadliest glare, which, she knew, wasn’t very deadly. She’d been told she looked like a Kewpie doll more than once. Not very threatening. “Something more than that maybe even. But it’s a good start.”
The car pulled up to a massive, wrought-iron gate and Ethan leaned out the car window and punched in a series of numbers. “Gated community,” he said. “Nothing but the best, you know.”
“I think it’s nice.” The car wound up a long, winding hill and she knew that Ethan’s grandparents’ house was certain to have billion-dollar views.
“It’s a bit pretentious, actually, but don’t tell my grandmother I said that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He turned to her, sliding his hand across the expanse of seat between them. He laced his fingers through hers, his thumb drifting over the back of her hand. She felt goosebumps raise up on her arms. He hadn’t touched her for a long time. Only a few days, actually, and yet … it felt like a really long time.
“I’m going to introduce you to my grandparents and get the family ring from my grandfather after dinner, let him know my intentions and all that.”
Her heart slammed against her breast. She nodded, trying to pretend she was unaffected.
“And then I’ll give it to you after we leave. We’ll have to come up with a nice story for my grandmother because she’ll want all the gory details. Women always do.”
“Yes. True.” Her stomach tightened, a sick feeling spreading through her. “I … I don’t know how I feel using your family heirloom ring when it’s … when we’re lying.”
“So? I’ll return the ring when our marriage fails. What difference does it make?”
“None, I guess.” Except it kind of did. “Why didn’t your mother end up with the ring?”
“It wasn’t new. She doesn’t really like antiques.” The corner of his mouth curved up slightly. “She likes really modern stuff. Spot-on trend. And my grandmother never would have let her put it into a new setting.”
“Family traditions shouldn’t be broken. I mean, I don’t think. We didn’t really have any.”
It was no use feeling wistful about it. She’d spent so long just wishing things were different. From the moment she’d realized her life wasn’t like other girls’, she’d wanted something else. More. A connection with her mother that wasn’t based on her career.
But that hadn’t happened. It had always been about Noelle’s career for her mother. About what she could do, what she could get thanks to Noelle’s talents. Noelle accepted it now, more or less. Anyway, the charming revelations Ethan had uncovered about her mother made her realize Celine wasn’t the kind of woman she wanted a relationship with anyway.
No, she wasn’t going to waste time being pouty about what she had and what she didn’t have. Not anymore. She was going to take the money, and she was going to get on with her life. She would take her new office skills, or her rediscovered favor with the media, and she would make something of herself, and manage her own money. Without her teacher. Without her mother. Without Ethan.
She was done being played like a puppet. She was in charge now.
“Mine have more to do with status than sentimentality. My mother is new money, you see, so she doesn’t understand how special it is to have things that have been passed down. Or so I’ve heard,” he said, his words cut short as they passed through another gate and onto the grounds of an opulent estate with lush, manicured grounds and three fountains stationed right out front, seemingly for the sole purpose of trumpeting that the people who owned the house had money. Bags of it.
Ethan pulled the car through and parked it in the drive. “My grandparents have valet service,” he explained dryly.
He got out and rounded to her side, opening the door for her. “Full service,” she replied, standing to find herself just about breast to chest with him.
“I’m a full-service kind of guy,” he said, his eyes seeming darker, his voice rougher. She wished she knew what he was thinking whenever that happened. Why it seemed like one part attraction, one part anger, and complete confusion.
Her fingers twitched with the urge to reach out and put her hand to his stubbled cheek, to find out how rough it would be beneath her palm. She wanted to. Badly. But she wouldn’t. That part wasn’t really confusing. But it was crossing boundaries she wasn’t here to cross.
No show without an audience. No touching unless someone was around to witness it. Otherwise it would just be a personal indulgence and she wasn’t about to go there.
“I have no doubt,” she said, turning away from him.
“Ready?”
She started playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in her head, imaging her fingers moving over the keys. Finding her balance, her center and her tempo. “Ready.”
“Then let’s meet my family.”
As always, a family dinner was a formal affair at his grandparents’ home. He’d always found it part of their upper-crust, slightly stiff charm. They weren’t perfect, and they were hardly suburban normal, but life with Nathaniel and Ariana Grey had been much more functional than life with his parents.
And after his mother’s breakdown, this was where he’d spent most of his time. His father had been too busy, his mother too ill. And as controlling as his grandfather could be, at least he cared.
When it came down to it, he wasn’t overly thrilled about lying to them, any more than Noelle was. But no matter how stern his grandfather pretended to be, he’d never had it in him to cut off his only son.
But Ethan had what it took. No question.
He took Noelle’s hand in his beneath the table. A subtle gesture, not one of open ownership. The kind that had the appearance of being only for them, something intimate and special, but was really for the benefit of everyone else. The art of performance.
Still, even if it was a gesture meant for everyone else, the feeling of her silky-smooth skin beneath his palm sent shocks of pleasure through him, desire tightening his gut, making his blood hot.
Noelle Birch was slowly driving him crazy. How else could he be getting hard from holding hands, of all things? Hand-holding hadn’t gotten him hard when he was fourteen. He had no excuse for the reaction now.
His grandfather’s eyes were fixed on Noelle, and Ethan knew Nathaniel had made the connection. Fifteen years might have passed since the affair between Celine and his father had ended, but no one had forgotten.
