The Mogul's Maybe Marriage (7 page)

Ethan grimaced in the dark. One minute, he'd been offering chaste comfort, trying to ease a frightened soul. The next, that frightened soul had sprung to full, sensual life beneath his fingertips, arching to meet his hand, reflexively seeking the pleasure they'd shared in the past.

The last thing Sloane needed now, though, was to realize just how much pleasure he longed to give her. The last thing she needed was to discover how completely she'd aroused him, how hard he was, just beneath her warm, supple flesh, with only a few layers of fabric between them. “Sloane,” he breathed, as she pulled back enough to look into his eyes.

“Please,” she said, her voice still faintly blurred from sleep. “Kiss me.”

The trust in her moonlit gaze nearly made him lose control. It would be so easy to shift her. So easy to fall back on the mattress beside her. So easy to rip away that cotton thing she was wearing, to see her body, ready and ripe, waiting for him,
eager
for him.

The unbearably rough fabric of his silk boxers taunted him. The feel of her across his lap was almost enough to spring him, to release him from the delicious tension that threatened all his logic, all his higher senses.

Sure, he had told her that she was the one in control.
He had said that she must ask him before he'd give in to his temptation. And he'd heard her words, just a heartbeat before, heard her beg him to touch his lips to hers.

But this wasn't right. This wasn't how he'd envisioned her coming to him. Inviting him, giving up her silly, stubborn rules. She was still dazed, confused by her dream. She wasn't capable of making a true decision.

Summoning the last vestige of his control, he lifted her from his lap. The motion brought him dangerously close to her throat, to the devastatingly smooth stretch of flesh that begged to be tasted, nibbled, nipped. Clenching his teeth, he settled her on the bed. Before she could register the change in their positions, before she could protest, he got to his feet, sucking in his breath against his body's own complaint. He was actually in pain as he made himself move to the far side of the bed, as he gathered up her sheets, as he aired out the linen between them, using it as a shield.

By the time the fabric had drifted on top of her, by the time it had billowed and collapsed and revealed her lithe form, he had enough control over himself that he could speak without groaning. “There's a night-light in the bathroom. I'll turn it on.” He matched action to narration, relieved to find that he could walk without betraying his arousal. With half the room between them, he dared to look back at her. She was propped up on her pillows, enthroned like some sort of devastating princess. He could just make out the blue of her eyes in the glow of the night-light from the marble room.

“I'll have James call someone about the tree tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she said, and he could hear the confusion in her voice, the question that she was afraid to ask, the invitation that she wanted to issue again. The
invitation that he could not accept honorably. Not that night. Not under those circumstances.

“Good night, Sloane,” he said as he crossed to her bedroom door.

“Good night,” she whispered.

He closed the door behind him as softly as he could. A part of him longed to stand there, to listen until he heard her even breaths, to peek in once she was safely dreaming.

Another part of him, though, knew that he would never be able to walk out of that room again. Not without claiming everything she had to offer. Not without taking away the promise he had given her the night that she had agreed to become his wife.

He curled his hands into fists and made his way down the hall to his own lonely room.

S
loane poured herself a cup of peppermint tea from the pot that James had set on the countertop. The man had greeted her cheerfully when she padded into the kitchen, her clothes cautiously chosen, hair carefully brushed. A cardamom coffee cake rested on the center island, fragrant as it cooled to eating temperature.

“I hope that you slept well,” James said, gesturing for her to pull up one of the nearby bar stools.

Sloane settled onto the comfortable chair and forced herself to take a soothing sip of tea. She wished she could have a healthy dose of caffeine, something to help her wake up after her long night of tossing and turning. She made some noncommittal noise, though. There was no reason to tell James about her strange dreams. No reason to mention Ethan's late-night visit. Before she could weave a polite lie, though, Ethan's unexpected
voice sliced across the kitchen. “I want that oak tree down by nightfall, James.”

Sloane's gaze shot up from her stoneware mug. Her stomach flipped at the sight of Ethan, framed in the doorway to the kitchen. She'd seen him in a tuxedo, of course. Twice. And in a business suit. But this was the first time she'd seen him in casual clothes. His jeans were snug around his waist, just tight enough to suggest the muscles she knew stretched beneath them. His arms were akimbo, as if he expected to be challenged about the tree. She swallowed hard, trying not to think about the hard abs beneath his hunter-green shirt, the pecs that she had felt under her cheek the night before.

“Of course,” James said, his voice calm and respectful. “I'll make the call now.”

“It's Sunday,” Sloane said. She couldn't imagine what an emergency tree crew would charge on a weekend. “Surely it can wait until tomorrow.”

“No,” Ethan contradicted. “It can't.” He nodded to James, and the caretaker hurried away to solve the problem. Sloane drowned her discomfort in another sip of peppermint tea.

Ethan took advantage of the uneasy silence to pick up the palm-size box on the corner of the center island, the one he had deposited there when he'd returned home from the office the night before. “Here,” he said, passing it across to Sloane. She looked up in surprise, peering at him over the rim of her mug. The pose made her look impish. Attractive, in a coltish way. Damn! What
didn't
make her look attractive? For the hundredth time, he wondered where he'd found the willpower to walk away from her the night before, to honor his promise to stay chaste.

“What's this?” she asked.

“A cell phone. One where the paparazzi can't track you down. My private number is already programmed in.”

She picked up the phone with an air of caution. “It's Sunday morning. I just called you yesterday, and you worked until midnight. When did you have time to pick up a new phone?”

He snorted. “That one came under the category of ‘security.' Daniel took care of it when he got back to the office, after bringing you here.” He reached into his back pocket, taking out his sleek leather wallet. An extra credit card was nestled beside his own. “Now
this
took a little more doing.”

He passed the silver card to her. Recognition dawned as she read her name in the raised letters across the bottom. “You can't—” she started to protest.

“I have.” He shook his head firmly. “It's a lot easier than my leaving hundred-dollar bills lying around, isn't it?”

There. She was blushing again. He
knew
that he'd made a mistake when he'd left her the money. Then again, if his misstep could bring that defiant sparkle to her eyes…

“Ethan,” she said, trying to give him back the card. “Really. This is too much.”

He closed his fingers over hers, trying to ignore the hum that her skin ignited in his. “Don't say that. You're going to need it. You have a lot of work ahead of you.”

“Work?”

“Daniel took care of the press yesterday. And they definitely know better than to try to get in here.” He paused, giving her a moment to think about what he was going to say. He felt guilty for having created the public spectacle that had already changed her life. His
past was catching up with him—all those nights of flirting with the press, of tweaking his grandmother's sensibilities, just because he could. If he hadn't invested so much energy and effort into squiring meaningless women around town…

But he hadn't known that he'd meet anyone worth leaving the games behind. He hadn't known Sloane Davenport.

“You're going to need a whole new wardrobe,” he said. “Invitations will come in once we announce the engagement, once we make it more official than this morning's gossip columns. Cocktail parties, dinner parties… Your dance card will be full. Buy what you want. Just make sure that one outfit is…sedate.”

“Sedate?” She almost laughed, almost thought that he was teasing. But she could hear the tension in his voice. “Why sedate?”

He swallowed hard. “You'll wear it to meet my grandmother. She can be…a challenge.”

Sloane almost laughed at the uneasy expression on Ethan's face. She wasn't afraid of Margaret Hartwell. She'd learned all about the woman, before the AFAA charity auction. As project coordinator, Sloane had discovered Margaret's favorite drink was gin and tonic, with extra ice and three limes. She knew that Margaret preferred ballpoint pens to roller balls, that she chose black ink over blue. Margaret's favorite color was green, and her birthday was January 5.

“I'm sure I'll find something she'll approve of,” Sloane said. Even if she had to look in the maternity section of the store.

Ethan nodded, as if he were checking off another item on his efficient to-do list. She watched as he crossed the kitchen, then opened a drawer to select a knife. He
carved up James's coffee cake with flawless efficiency, placing a generous slice on a plate and passing it to her.

“Oh, that's too much,” she said. “I don't usually eat breakfast.”

“Well, that will change now.”

She bristled at his peremptory tone. “I can decide what I want to eat and what I don't want to eat.”

“You could, when you were making decisions for yourself. You've got the baby to think about now.”

She made a face. “And the
baby
wants me to eat cardamom coffee cake?”

“Good point. I'll tell James to forget about baking for the next six months. Protein will be good for all of us.”

She thought about arguing—she
liked
cardamom coffee cake—but she knew that Ethan was right. In fact, she was secretly pleased that he was concerned about her and the baby's health. And she loved the way that he said “all of us.” Loved it so much that she almost missed his question. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

The question was innocent enough—almost the same as James had asked—but it made her remember the feeling of Ethan's arms around her, the heat of his hands burning through her cotton nightgown. She couldn't control the blush that painted her cheeks as she fumbled for an answer. “Yes,” she managed. “After a while.” After he'd left. After the blood pounding in her veins had finally calmed to a dull roar. She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Thank you,” she said.

Thank you for waking me from my nightmare, she meant. Thank you for holding me when I felt like a lost child. Thank you for leaving, when I forgot my promise to myself, when I forgot that I can't have you. Not until we're actually married. Until I'm certain that this is real.

She wanted to say all that. All that and more. But the words jumbled together inside her head, tumbling over one another, until she wasn't sure that she could ever make him understand.

“You're welcome,” he said gravely.

She sighed in contentment. He
did
understand. Just as he had when they'd spent hour after hour sharing their thoughts, their secrets, their dreams.

He kept his eyes on hers as he said, “New beds can take some getting used to.”

There. That was another conversational gift. He was giving her an option. She could take the easy way out and say something simple and sly and sexy about new beds. They'd laugh together. She'd probably blush.

But he was inviting her to tell him something more. He was opening the door to a deeper conversation, to an admission about the roots of her nightmare. She swallowed hard, then raised her chin, meeting his eyes with a new-forged determination that felt almost like defiance. “You'd think I would have learned to adjust when I was a kid. I was in and out of a lot of foster homes.”

She saw the way he was listening to her. She was certain that he'd been about to pour himself a cup of coffee. Instead, he took a casual seat on one of the high stools, hooking his toes under the footrest. His voice was mild as he said, “That must have been difficult.”

Trust, Sloane had written. She wanted to trust the man who was going to be her husband. Respect. Partnership.

She needed to make those words happen before she could even tell him that she'd put them on the list, that she'd created a list in the first place. Trust. She raised her chin and said, “There was a woman I used to call Angry Mother.”

Ethan merely met her gaze. Sloane hurried on, before she could think about the fact that she had never told anyone about Angry Mother. “That was my third foster home. The house was a wreck, and the windows were all crooked inside their frames. It was freezing at night, all of January, of February. And every morning, Angry Mother told me I was bad, because I tried to sleep in my blue jeans. She put me back in the system because of that. She said I wasn't good enough to keep.”

“I'm sorry,” Ethan whispered. “No child should have to experience that sort of thing.”

It hurt him to see the way that she swallowed, the way that she fought to meet his gaze. Then and there, he promised himself that he would never do anything to make her look that bleak again. Gently, he said, “Your parents…” He trailed off, giving her the option of picking up the words, of sharing more of her story, her past.

“I never knew my father. I think he was a lot older than my mother. He was long gone by the time I was born.” He watched Sloane's fingers curl over her belly, as if she were protecting their baby from an ugly truth. Her voice was a lot harder when she said, “My mother was only seventeen when she had me. She was an addict and she'd already been in and out of treatment for three years when I came along. She stayed clean, though, the entire time she was carrying me.”

“She must have loved you very much.” He said the words because he knew they had to be true. It twisted his heart when Sloane shook her head.

“She put me into foster care before I was a year old.”

She tried to be matter-of-fact, but he heard the carefully trained acceptance in her tone. Old doubt was transparent in her eyes; it weighted down her shoulders. He tried to keep his own tone light as he contra
dicted. “But she put you first, for nine months. Keeping away from drugs for her pregnancy couldn't have been easy, especially when she was only a child herself. She wanted you to be healthy. Safe.”

Sloane had never thought about it that way. All these years, she'd thought about her mother as a weak person, a sick woman, unable to face the new life that she'd created through her own mistakes. Sloane had never once seen her mother as strong or brave. Doing what she thought best, even when everyone had turned against her, had left her on her own.

As Sloane met Ethan's steady gaze, another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. “She wanted to get me back. She put me in foster care because she thought that she'd get better, that she'd get well enough for us to live together. She could have put me up for adoption, but she hoped…”

Hope. The word was a strange one when applied to Sloane's childhood.
Hope
wasn't a word that Sloane associated with the dark-haired woman she barely remembered.
Hope
wasn't part of her foster family patchwork.

But it was, of course. It had been all along. That was why Sloane had named her internet work the Hope Project. That was why she had designed her system, to help children like she had been.

“Thank you,” she said to Ethan. “I hadn't really thought about things that way before.”

She was warmed by his easy smile. “Glad that I could be of assistance.” He lifted the teapot that James had left on the counter, gesturing toward her mug. “Can I heat that up for you?”

She edged the stoneware closer to him. “You're spoiling me.”

“That's my intention.”

She flushed at the purr beneath his words. She would have gulped down her tea, but she knew that it would burn her tongue. She settled for using her fork to tamp down stray crumbs from her coffee cake. When the silence ticked a dozen points closer to unbearable, she blurted out, “What about you? You said that your grandmother raised you?”

Damn.
Ethan would rather spend the morning teasing her, bringing out that blush on her cheeks. He'd even prefer talking about
her
past, navigating the thicket of her tangled family ties. Turnabout was fair play, though. “My parents got divorced when I was seven. Neither of them was prepared to raise a…challenging child alone, so Grandmother stepped in.”

“Challenging?”

“Let's just say that I didn't like to follow the rules very much.”

“Didn't?” She raised her eyebrows and extended her hand toward him, so that her engagement ring sparkled in the morning sunlight. “I don't think that's changed very much, Mr. Hartwell. You and rules still seem to be pretty much strangers to each other.”

“Why change when something's working for you?” he retorted with a shrug. She should smile more often. It brought out the sparkle in her eyes.

“Seriously,” she said, taking back her hand before he could think of something distracting to do with those long fingers. “What sort of trouble did you get into?”