Ethan (8 page)

They
turned their boards and settled into the cradle between waves, not two feet between them and facing a quickly descending sunset. Yellows and oranges had made room for pinks and lavenders. He never got bored looking at the sky. Even when it was a pale shade of blue with not a cloud in sight, he could drift for hours gazing at nothing, and yet everything.

His thoughts were
interrupted when Shae bent over her board, scooped a handful of water, and tossed it at him. It sprayed his face and rained down on his shoulders and chest. She smiled at her achievement.

“What was that for?”

“You went somewhere really deep,” she said. “And we’re out here to have fun.”

He kicked his feet and
moved closer to her, so that their boards bumped, their legs rubbed, and her eyes snapped with awareness.

“You want to chase away those thoughts?” He let his gaze skim over her thighs, toned and clenched around her board and couldn’t stop the image from exploding in his mind—Shae atop him, her knees clenched around his hips, her breasts swaying in his palms. Damn he wanted inside her. “I know what will work.”

He lifted his gaze slowly. Her stomach, that small swell that tempted him, quivered and he didn’t think it was from a chill. Her skin glowed under the radiance of the setting sun. He watched her nipples pucker against the top of her swimsuit. Her lips parted. Her eyes grew slumberous.

“I’m sure you do,’ she murmured.

The water was warm and the air was cooling. Sunset was a reality, indigo chasing the pastels from the sky. And her closeness was doing crazy things to his body. 

His chest tightened, so that he became aware of each breath he drew.

His skin heated so that the salty air carried a chill.

And his cock had again
grown deaf to his pleas of reason.

He closed the space between them, seeking the soft skin of her neck. She tasted of the
ocean. He inhaled a mix of salt and sweet—some kind of flower scent still in her hair, on her skin. He brought his hand to rest against the small swell of her stomach, his fingertips trailing lightly along her curves and she shuddered in response. When he tugged gently on her piercing, her spine arched and he smiled into the sensitive skin beneath her ear.

“You’re purring,” he said.

“You’re stroking,” she returned, as though her response was a no-brainer.

“I like it. A lot.”

He lifted his head, took a quick peek at the waves rolling toward them, and then stroked her lips with his tongue. “Let me in, Shae.”

She opened and her palm flattened against his abs, her fingers splayed lower so that they played with the waistband of his trunks
, dipping beneath to stroke through his coarse hair. His muscles contracted. His breath thinned. She plunged her tongue into his mouth. No preamble, no hesitation, a woman intent on a full give and take. His heart kicked into staccato and the pressure at the base of his cock built relentlessly. Ethan would have thrown her back on the board and mounted her then and there if they’d had even the slimmest chance of making good on the deed before they were clobbered by the waves.

Her
hand moved lower, over his trunks, and her thumb found the head of his cock and traced the scalloped edge. Passion slammed into him. He lifted his hand and palmed her breast and the sweet weight of it curled through him.

He pulled away so he could whisper against her lips,
“We need to take this home.”

“Hmm, maybe,” s
he returned.

He felt
her mouth open in a sexy grin and he laughed at her obvious play for duplicity.

“I don’t think it’s up for question.”

“Okay then, definitely.” She lifted her foot and braced it against his board. “But until then, we’d better keep our distance.” She pushed off and the space between them widened.

He’d never had sex on his board, drifting between waves. Lots of guys had, and
had lived to brag about it. It just wasn’t his thing. So why were images of exactly that taunting him?

“You ever sealed the deal out here?”

She chuckled but said, “Your opinion of me is a little over the top.” Her cheeks were beautifully flushed. “I’m completely lacking in risqué moments.”

“Me neither.”

“You have a bucket list going?”

“That’s not on it.”

She nodded and turned back to the water. “One more wave?” she posed.

He nodded. “And then dinner.”

He watched her mood shift, a somber cast enter her eyes. He knew where she was going—they always talked “shop” over their evening meal, delved into his screenplay-slash-life.

“I’d like to ask you something, Ethan.”

“Anything.” That was one of their rules of fair play.

“What do you fear the most about your past?” She turned toward him and the last rays of the sun ignited her eyes. She was breathtaking and Ethan could have stayed with the moment much longer, lulled by the gentle rocking of each wave, falling deeper into her eyes. But reality was a bitch and it kept intruding on his present. There was no evading it and the urgency to have it settled picked up its strumming tempo in his blood. “About your marriage, in particular?” she pressed.

He cleared the emotion
from his throat and confided, “That I pushed Tina in front of that train.”

Chapter Eight
   

Shae tossed Ethan the key and he locked both boards into place on the roof of her Q5. They’d decided to keep her car in its rare find—a public space in the sandy beach lot that gave equal access to the w
ater and to the strip of boutiques, art galleries and restaurants along State Street. He knew of a “shack,” as he called it, that made fish tacos that cherried the competition. She’d laughed at his use of surfer lingo and pictured Ethan, seventeen years old, tall and tanned, his hair longer and streaked by the sun.  If they’d attended high school together she knew she would have had it bad for him.

Ethan rounded the back of the car and she
held out her hand for the key, but he had other ideas. He stood close and pulled on the front pocket of her cut-offs until he could slide the remote inside.

“That way I’ll know where to find it.”

“Afraid I’ll leave without you?”

“Not a chance,” he returned. He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers. “
We’ll go together,” he promised, his voice thick with passion.

He took her hand and began walking and Shae was assaulted by a number of emotions.

Arousal for sure. She’d been on “go” almost from the moment she’d walked into Ethan’s house. Their kiss on the water had primed her. Her skin had become so sensitive to touch getting out of her sandy swimsuit was a must. She’d changed in the back seat of the car, behind the tinted windows, while Ethan kept watch.

She was attracted to Ethan and it was intense. She was a big girl and knew exactly where it would lead. And she wanted that. She didn’t doubt that their coming together would be a fleeting thing—everything in Hollywood was.
And, besides, she was leaving.

But there was more going on and this gave her pause. She liked holding hands with Ethan. It created a warmth that spread up her arm and settled in her chest. It was a commentary—announcing that they were a couple. Co
uples belonged to each other, it was a defining characteristic. And that wasn’t them. No matter how much she wanted such a connection, she needed to remember that she and Ethan weren’t building anything more than a professional relationship. Fringe benefits were the norm in their world.

So she kept her hand in his, was lured by the warmth, but not fooled by it.

She gazed at him in the dusk. His five o-clock shadow was thick, his hair already dry. He’d pulled on a t-shirt but left his trunks on. They skirted the powdered edge of the road quietly, and she noticed that the tense set of his face had eased some. Intensity simmered below his surface, she could feel its gentle vibe, but Ethan was relaxed. He’d claimed surfing as his form of mediation and she totally got that.

“You should get out on the water more often,” she said.

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“This is the first I’ve seen you relaxed.”

“Have I been a tough task master?”

“You’ve been
a little cyborg,” she confirmed. He’d been determined to work through the truth, to face it and work it out of his system. And he’d set a rigorous pace for them.

“Half-robot, half-man?”

She shrugged. “I think it’s computer, but that rigid—yes.”

He stopped their forward progress and turned to her. “I’m all man,” he told her. “I come with a lot of mistakes but a lot of good intentions
, too.”

He was warning her and she nodded to let him know she understood.

Ethan felt that something more, too. She’d seen a glimpse of that awareness in his eyes when they were on the water. He had looked at her briefly with emotion rather than arousal. And then he had taken refuge in the physical.

He was still on the run, and that was fine, because
, she reminded herself, she wasn’t on the chase.

The shack was a small white house converted into a restaurant. It was nestled in the hills with a stunning view of the Pacific. Indoor seating was limited but the deck was expansive and Sha
e chose a table with Adirondack chairs so that they could sit back and sip those margaritas while the sun completed its cycle and stars began to make their appearance.

Ethan brought a platter of rolled tac
os and warm tortillas, bowls of rice and beans, and mesquite-smoked chicken to the table. Their drinks arrived in tall plastic cups, frosted and salted and garnished with a wedge of lime. The bar tender placed a separate shot of tequila beside each of their cups and Shae raised a questioning eyebrow.

Ethan shrugged. “A chaser,” he explained.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

“Do I need to?”

No. She was going to have sex with Ethan. Tonight. The alcohol would take the edge off,  loosen any initial shyness she felt with him, but had nothing to do with her decision.

She shook her head and leaned across the table to grab a chip and dip it into the salsa, but she held his gaze.

“Just so we’re clear on this,” she began, “I’m going to have sex with you tonight, Ethan, because I want to. Not because the drink is telling me to.”

“And even though we are at very different places in our lives?” he pressed.

“Different how?”

“I can’t give you what you want,” he told her. “The relationship. The baby—“

“Of course not,” she agreed. “In a few days, I’m leaving here.”

He didn’t like her response. His brows drew together in a frown and his eyes grew dark.

“I’m not trying to run you off.”

“Aren’t you?” she challenged, but didn’t let him dangle from the hook long. “Don’t worry, Ethan, I won’t leave before we’re done,” she promised. “Or if I have to go for a few days, I’ll come back.”

“Why would you have to leave for a few days?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment. In San Francisco.”

“When?”

“Next Thursday.”

Six days away. It would be her second at the clinic and she would have to come prepared—having chosen the “father” of her child so that all things were in a holding pattern as they waited for her cycle to present its most opportune moment for implantation.
She hated all the clinical terminology and felt her lips twist with her distaste for it. But the end result would be a dream come true, and she needed to keep that foremost in her mind.

“For the baby?”

“Yes.”

He considered
that and nodded but didn’t follow up with any more questions. And Shae understood that. It was weird talking about her plans, but the reason for her presence in Ethan’s life opened a door to a level of intimacy that was not usually so quickly forthcoming—dissecting the anatomy of his marriage. She’d grown closer to Ethan and he to her through that sharing. She’d encountered a lot of raw emotion in the screenplay, acts of youthful foolishness and rebellion, but also uncompromising loyalty and hope in the future. She’d gotten to know the teenaged Ethan and was just now learning about the young man who had gone off to war with a streak of patriotism spurned by the 9-11 attacks, only to find the Middle East a tenuous, dangerous place where a Marine wore his guard 24-7.

Patriotism had a romance about it, until th
e warrior was knee-deep in the carnage.

“What page are you on in the screenplay?”

“One hundred, forty-eight.” She sipped from her margarita and sat back in her chair. “You’re in Afghanistan—day three.”

His ga
ze flickered. His jaw tensed. “I learned a lot that day. A lot about life and what it’s not.”

“Already d
isillusioned?” she wondered, but she thought something else was at work, particularly in those pages. From the moment his feet had touched that sandy, foreign ground, death had presented itself in a variety of forms.  She sensed that the young Ethan had begun to pull back into a safe place inside himself. He’d wanted to believe that there was an inherent decency in all people, and yet he was holding in his arms a three year old Afghan girl whose body was riddled with the shrapnel of a homemade bomb. She’d had to stop reading there.

“It happened q
uickly,” he agreed.

“T
he loss of innocence is always devastating.”

She wondered if he associated t
hat kind of purity with his marriage. If it became for him that sacred ground, even while he was pulling into a protective cocoon.

He looked at her as he lifted his shot glass. “I accepted it.” His voice was deep and a current of anguish ran through it. “It just took awhile.” He threw the shot back and then sucked on the li
me wedge. Shae watched his brows knit together as the tequila burned his throat and the fumes ran up through his nose.

“A long while, I’d guess.”

“Yes.” He handed her a plate. “If I’d come to terms with it sooner, maybe I could have saved my marriage.”

My wife.
Shae heard the sentiment in his tone.

“You’re not responsible for her decisions,” she pointed out.

“Just my own,” he agreed. “And I made a lot of bad moves that affected our marriage.”

“W
hat about Tina? She must have made a few.” Shae had come to know the teenaged girl. Tina had been needy but not clingy. She’d known what she wanted and intended to have it with that single-minded focus of youth.

“We all do.”

“I’m just saying that fault in a relationship can rarely be assumed by one person,” Shae explained.

“
I’m not looking for fault.”

“You’re looking for transgression,” she insisted. “And not even hers—”

“I know it already.”

“But not your transgression
,” she agreed. He was looking for what he’d done wrong and refused to look at how he’d been wronged. In Shae’s experience it was rare for one to exist without the other. “I get the feeling this is target practice.”

He nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. I plan to
look at everything and wipe out the character trait that led to the dissolution of my marriage.”

“And if this isn’t about character?”

That made him pause. “It has to be. What other involvement is there?”

“Setting, plot,” she provided
, and then took it a step further, into territory he spent a lot of time and energy avoiding. “I think this is more about what happened in Afghanistan than what happened at home.”

He sat back, his drink and food
forgotten. She’d surprised him, but he was open to her theory. He thought through the possibility, memories passing like shadows in his eyes. She tried to help him along:

“You went over there believ
ing it was the right thing. You came back, realizing the cost was too high.”

“True
,” he said.

“You fear intimacy,” she spoke plainly, realizing that this was one of the moments he’d asked for, where she was ripping off skin with the bandage. “
It’s time to name it, Ethan. What is it about women that has you running away?”

“I leave before they develop real feelings for me.”

But Shae shook her head. “That’s not it. It’s admirable—inflict as little pain as possible and all that.” She waved the idea away with her hand. “But there’s no fear in that. There’s safety. Try again.”

She watched the muscle beneath his eyebrow tick.

“I think it has more to do with your feelings.
You
start feeling more, and that’s when you cut and run.”

“Probably.” He considered her words. She watched his eyes darken, the line of his jaw tigh
ten. His face grew stern, but her words had already found their way inside and he had to deal with them. She watched the struggle on his face, didn’t miss the way his hands tightened into fists against the table, or the way his chest stilled on his next breath. Then the admission, a simple word packed with the power of life, “Yes. You’re right about that.”

“And
not because Tina betrayed you. Not even because she chose death over her life with you. But because you realized something in Afghanistan. Maybe not here—” she tapped her head—“but here—” She laid her hand over hear heart. “There are no guarantees, are there? Not in life. Not in love. Not in war.”

“
Death is it,” he agreed. “It’s the only absolute.”

“I think you tried to make it work.”

“Holding on tight only squeezes the life out of what you love.”

She could tell he was speaking from experience.

“You have to release the things you can’t control,” she said.

“Which is just about everything, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Is that
tonight’s message?” he asked. “I have control issues?”

“Don’t you?”
she challenged. “We’d all like a happily ever after. We’d like to populate our world with the lovelies, not the uglies, and know today what’s going to happen tomorrow. But none of that’s possible.”

“I’d be happy knowing I didn’t cause Tina’s suicide.”

“And that will set you free?”